Playwright: Dorothy Tristan
At: Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division
Phone: 773-527-1234; $22-$25
Runs through: Feb. 18
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Have you heard the one about the husband who likes to watch his wife screw other men? SURE you have! The obedient missus who cuckolds her spouse with his full endorsement has been the premise of ribald tales ( and het male fantasy ) ever since Catullus. So you'd think a play resurrecting this venerable locker-room guffaw would be a period romp with tapestried bedrooms and flying petticoats. But playwright Dorothy Tristan sets us down in the stuffy suburb of Berwyn—BERWYN!—in 1979, where ( we are told ) predominantly Eastern European immigrant citizens dwell in cozy isolation from troubling social influences.
Our voyeur is Donald Cervenka, the mild-mannered high school music teacher, and the facilitator of his desire is the compliant Cathy Cervenka, who rationalizes her adulterous charades by denying herself orgasmic enjoyment thereof. But after she selects a—gasp!—Black youth as her accomplice, complications ensue. Before we are done, a dotty old-world granny, a large furry dog, nosy neighbors, a precocious teenager, an Egyptian junk-shop proprietor, a pair of gun-toting thugs, illegal contraband, hay fever, patriotic pageants and a trayful of kolachkes all figure in the screwball antics.
The production currently occupying the Chopin Theatre employs the usual low-budget devices in its attempt to realize Tristan's cinematic vision. Locale is suggested by large photographs born across the stage like the scorecards at boxing matches, while scene changes are expedited by a turntable that revolves with the speed and silence of a brontolieon thunder-machine. The level of expertise varies among the actors, ranging from Kenn E. Head ( on loan, presumably, from Prop Thtr, one of the three producing entities ) , as the diddy-bopping cicisbeo to Sam Potter's patently unthreatening Tarantino-quirky gangster. Chris Ussery's sound design, however, employs a uniformly well-selected medley of sweet-salacious disco-era ditties.
Despite its copious sim-sex ( the nudity replicated by body-suits with the naughty bits painted on ) , occasionally salty language and a crucial scene involving the canine yeti taking a crap at center stage, Bohemian Nights exhibits all the hallmarks of a 1950s bedroom farce: wimpish self-centered men, leggy airheaded women, stereotypical 'ethnics' with funny accents and, ultimately, conservative values. Indeed, the proper home for Bohemian Nights would appear to be the dinner-theater circuit, regaling comfortably married, middle-aged audiences drawn from communities, well, not unlike that of the Cervenkas.
