All sexed up

Perishable gets Hot 'n' bothered

by Johnette Rodriguez

By Paula Vogel. Directed by Neal Baron. With Pamela Bongas, Russell Kellogg, Jen Hayes, Todd Sullivan, Megan McKinney and T.J. Curran. At Perishable Theatre through May 11.

A Paula Vogel play is nothing if not finely textured and richly layered -- textured by the playwright's use of several dramatic techniques, layered by her ability to suggest multiple themes within the plot and multiple motivations within the characterizations. This is not to say that Vogel's plays are cerebral or inaccessible. Far from it. It's just that she gives you a lot to chew on.

In the Providence premiere of Vogel's 1994 Hot 'n' Throbbing at Perishable Theatre, for example, she ponders many questions about male/female relationships, about families and about American society, all related to an observation she makes in the introduction to the published version of the play: "obscenity begins at home." She wrote Hot 'n' Throbbing on an NEA fellowship, after signing the Helms "obscenity pledge" required of recipients, in part to test the limits of the pledge's censorship. And although there is explicit language and a bit of bump-and-grind in the play, the audience gets more than they bargained for when Vogel marks the congruence between "adult entertainment" and domestic violence.

Thirty-something Charlene (Pamela Bongas), the "story editor," i.e., writer, for a "feminist film company that produces women's erotica," spends her days churning out "hot 'n' throbbing" prose on the Mac in her living room. She is a single mom to two pouting teenagers and the estranged wife of Clyde, on whom she has placed a restraining order.

Bongas plays Charlene with a resigned-to-her-lot toughness. She's less rebellious than pragmatic about the way she earns money to keep Reeboks on the feet of her brood, less frustrated at her daughter's defiance of authority than biting-her-nails anxious about Leslie Ann's budding sexuality and less vengeful than forewarned by keeping a pistol in her desk drawer. Bongas shows Charlene to be no shrinking violet, but she also gets across her vulnerable spots.

Much of the play's humor (for Vogel manages to lighten the weightiest themes) comes from the early scenes with Leslie Ann (Jen Hayes) and Calvin (Todd Sullivan). Both Hayes and Sullivan do a splendid job of conveying, through slouch and slump, through nyah-nyah-nyah vocal tones and through exaggerated facial gestures, the insecurities and longings of adolescence. Each actor handles the sexual fantasies put onto his or her character with aplomb (masturbation for Calvin, "exotic dancing" for Leslie Ann).

The play's structure also involves a Voice Over character (Megan McKinney) and a Voice (T.J. Curran). McKinney is most often the narrator of Charlene's inner thoughts, although she sometimes takes on the role of her leather-bodice-and-fishnet-stockings costume, as the sex worker in a cheap porno act. The Voice is alternately a bouncer in said club, a literary commentator on the sexual goings-on or a mock-sexologist a la Krafft-Ebing, outlining the psychological profile of an abusive male.

That male (Clyde) might be the most difficult role in Hot 'n' Throbbing, but Russell Kellogg gives it the right balance of simple-minded schmo and twisted psychopath to make believable the outcome of the play. Kellogg elicits just enough empathy in parts of his conversation with Charlene that we have a glimmer of her attraction to him.

For Vogel gives us a play with a circular logic -- it begins and ends with the description of a sex scene, played out in a woman's mind: "She was in control. Control of her body. Control of her thoughts. Control of him." Only the last phrase and the narrator change. But those two changes add more questions to all that have gone before: Where does loss of innocence really begin? What are the long-lasting effects of witnessing violence in the home? Of being exposed to explicit sexual fantasies? Of inappropriate interest (or worse) by adults in their children's developing sexuality?

And the question that winds its way through every scene in the play: How incredibly strong is the cultural conditioning that allows both men and women to expect an element of control, of domination, even hurt or violence, most often directed at women, in sexual interactions? What happened to the human elements of tenderness, affection and a shared experience?

Somewhere between those two poles lies the crux of the censorship and pornography debate. By linking these issues to one of the most hot 'n' throbbing media topics of the past three years (thanks to a certain ex-football player's trial), Vogel has made us think long and hard about what obscenity really means and about just what we do expose our children -- and ourselves -- to every day.