Playwright: Ken Davenport, from www.myfirsttime.com . At: Broken Nose Theatre at Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-404-7336 or www.greenhousetheater.org; $20-$30. Runs through: July 28
Are you a virgin?
It's funny for a play all about people's initial sexual experiences like My First Time to find it necessary to ask the above question in a pre-show audience survey. But it all helps to make My First Time the all-inclusive experience that it strives to be.
Drawing extensively from contributed stories found on the Website www.myfirsttime.com created in 1998 by Peter Foldy and Craig Stuart, My First Time was the brainchild of Ken Davenport, who originally wrote, directed and produced the show. It was an off-Broadway hit that ran from 2007 to 2010, and now its belated Chicago debut arrives via an eminently enjoyable late-night production by the young Broken Nose Theatre troupe.
Staged by director Benjamin Brownson in a presentational style that recalls Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, My First Time features four engaging actors (Jennifer T. Grubb, Michael Allen Harris, Leslie Ruettiger and Adam Soule) flipping through a variety of stories and one-liners about that key moment in many a person's life when he or she first got it on. Interspersed throughout are audience survey responses and tallies that are both read aloud and projected above the actors, ranging from the exact location of where people did the deed, to the percentage of people who used contraception that first time out.
The stories run the gamut, featuring odd situations (an encounter at a college radio station during a Valentine's Day broadcast) to gross-out details (the teenage girl in the 1960s who was incorrectly told that douching with Coca-Cola would prevent pregnancy.) Lesbian and gay encounters are included in the mix, though the featured lesbian encounter feels more like it was selected more to titillate heterosexual male fantasies of sexually fluid girl-on-girl action rather than reflect a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian experience.
Although the show's tone is mostly comic and playful (particularly when coupling religious fanatics' denunciations of the show's inspirational Website with orgasmic deity-filled dialogue), My First Time also includes a few disturbing stories when the sex was forced or coerced.
Through it all, the acting company does a great job of shifting through the ups and downs and ins and outs of first-time sex. And if the show itself wasn't enough, the folks of Broken Nose have also invited a variety of Chicago storytellers to offer up a pre-show confessional about their own first time. (Sarah Zematis was hilarious on opening night with her story set at the Bristol Renaissance Faire near Kenosha, Wis.)
My First Time ultimately succeeds by shining a spotlight on a near universal human experience. Great stories are shared and audience members' memories are jogged to their own first-time trysts (although I wouldn't blame virgins if they ultimately feel left out).