Backseats & Bathroom Stalls
LOS ANGELES, CA (January 26, 2009) – BACKSEATS & BATHROOM STALLS - A NOT-SO-ROMANTIC COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS, written by Rob Mersola (What’s Wrong With Getting Laid?), is returning to the Lyric Hyperion Theatre Cafe (2106 Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake) by popular demand. The eight-week limited engagement begins performances on Friday, February 6. Presented by E. 4th Street Productions, Mersola also directs this raucous comedy that follows six New Yorkers, who are separated by much less than six degrees, through a maze of poignant, hilarious and sometimes embarrassing encounters and adventures.
-- Review -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Billing it as “a not-so-romantic comedy of bad manners” may be putting it mildly. Rob Mersola’s six degrees of fornication opens with two couples in the middle of giving head. And they say romance is dead.
This raunchy satire follows the trials, tribulations, and a little bloodletting of six New Yorkers consumed with getting laid whenever and wherever they can, even if this means squirreling inside a bathroom stall for a quickie, or hunkering down in the backseat of a parked car. No matter where they do it the consequences are hilarious as the stakes steadily rise for a climax worthy of such a show.
The comedy immediately gets underway when roommates Josie (Sadie Alexandru) and Calvin (Joshua Bitton) have their sex lives entangled by casual encounters more sordid than satisfying. Calvin can’t seem to shake or even remember the name of a man Charlie (Daniel Ponickly) obsessed with meeting men in public bathrooms to give fellatio. Never mind that Charlie is engaged to marry Elaine (Jeni Pearsons) an uptight Wasp who discovers over dinner the evidence of his oral predilection from a wet stain dripping from his tie.
Meanwhile, Josie has bigger problems with her well endowed boyfriend Harlan (Michael Alperin) that enjoys only two things for his self-gratifying pleasure – showing it off before hammering it home to whoever is willing to take it head on. And this also includes his girlfriend’s roommate Calvin.
Things become even more complicated when Josie, and later Elaine, falls under the spell of an amorous gypsy Giuseppi (Anil Kumar) preying on women through his silver-tongued palm reading.
In a final showdown the various couplings are exposed like dirty laundry hanging on a clothesline. No gets off easy, but getting off is what caused the fracas in the first place. There is a catfight and a coming out, but after all is said and done there is only one thing left to do…cuddle.
Snappy, short scenes keep the action and the energy mounting so that eighty minutes without an intermission seem to fly by. Mersola uses the intimate space well with minimal, but clever set dressing. Staged in 2000 at the Kraine Theater in NYC, Mersola has this madcap production finely tuned, avoiding any drag or clunky transitions.
Of the energetic cast, (half of which are Rutgers alum, Mersola’s alma mater), there is one standout, Anil Kumar, handily stealing the showing from his first entrance to his last exit. Kumar oozes sexuality from every pore as the Don Juan lady-killer. Coupled with an outrageous accent and sensual smirking, Kumar takes an otherwise caricature and fleshes him out into a full bodied character.
Joshua Bitton and Michael Alperin give solid performances, but have room to grow. Daniel Ponickly looks downright uncomfortable at times, and the ladies a bit too screechy and hysterical when the scene doesn’t call for them to be in their head voices.
This is not a play to take the in-laws visiting for Turkey weekend, unless they’re swingers, but for Gen X’ers and Y’s that aren’t as squeamish about seedy sex that straddles the fence and pushes the limits of good taste this is an evening of absolute voyeuristic pleasure.