Playwright: Diana Mucci-Beauchamp
At: Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: ( 773 ) 327-5252
Runs through: Feb. 27
Looking for a show with the intelligence of a wasted seventh grader and the stereotypes of a bad '70s sitcom? I'm a Female, Seeking a Male is for you.
This show aspires to the honest, titillating audacity and intelligence of Sex in the City. What it achieves is more along the lines of a junior high school lunchroom conversation.
How to succinctly describe this new comedy by Diana Mucci-Beauchamp and directed by Stefan Brun? That's easy: It's misogynistic, simple-minded and boring.
Characters include a mincing, prancing gay guy who saunters into a bar and goes apoplectic with joy when the DJ spins 'It's Raining Men.'
There is also a desperate fat girl with thick classes, running ( literally, through the aisles ) after a man fleeing like she has both leprosy and the Bubonic Plague.
There's a studly 'hottie-tottie' ( a label used by a character who is not 12 but 35 years old ) who loves 'em and leaves 'em.
There's the beer-swilling guy with a gut like a watermelon who can't take his eyes of the sports channel.
Then there's this exchange between the sullen 25-year-old single Shelly ( Michelle Weissgerber ) and her married 35-year-old sister Julia ( Patty Corella ) :
Shelly: I have something to tell you.
Julia: You're a lesbian.
Shelly ( very worried ) : No! I don't look like one, do I?
Gosh! Who knew lesbians all looked the same!
Most damningly, 'I'm a Female' reinforces some of the most damaging societal constructs about sex. To wit, your relationship is OK if you are having sex multiple times a week with animalistic frenzy. If not—watch out! Your sexuality and/or your relationship are profoundly defective.
So much for the school of thought that argues sexuality and relationships are defined by more than the mechanics and frequency of intercourse.
Beauchamp wrote I'm a Female after conducting interviews with single men, asking them intimate questions about what they looked for in women. Her idea was to write a book in order to help out the single women of the world catch a fella. We won't get into a discussion over whether a women are best served reading books about trying to understand men when they could be immersed in the works of, say, Dorothy Allison or Truman Capote to name just two.
Since Beauchamp doesn't plug her book in the program for the play, one has to assume publishers took a pass.
Smart move.
Set primarily in a Chicago bar, I'm a Female centers on Julia's efforts to interview men and Shelly's forays into the dating scene.
From the get-go, Shelly's character is sullen, churlish and contemptuously dismissive of everyone she meets. Why anyone would want to date somebody so obviously disgusted with the entire human race is beyond me, but hey, let's go along with the story just for the heck of it.
After Shelly snaps sardonically at a New Yorker named Sam ( Nick Leininger ) , he falls in love with her. Then Sam returns to New York, and Shelly continues dating in Chicago. She meets and dates a number of garishly cartoonish characters ( the gay guy, a nerd, a rock star wannabe, a weird Francophile ) , as her sister cheers her on and conducts interviews and copes with the disintegration of her own marriage.
The show is punctuated by men delivering monologues on their sex lives and interactions with women.
The first act climaxes—absolutely no pun intended—in one of the most contrived cliffhangers this side of a Friday episode of All My Children.
As things progress, Sam eventually shows up again and ... well, we wouldn't dream of giving this tidy, predictable ending away.
From this wasteland, there emerges an actor who bears watching in the future. She's Emily Lotspeich, a charismatic, intriguing presence who plays—sigh—the token 'slut' in the show.
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