This is either a comedy about male rape or a tragedy about pizza.
Or the tragicomic account of the rape of a pizza.
No, no, wait, I've got it! It's The Odd Couple with Vaginas Exact Revenge on a Penis with Pepperoni.
I was serious that time.
Tackled by a game cast that wrestles this peculiar piece to a draw, New City Theatre's latest venture is the unsettling-for-the-wrong-reasons Pizza Man. Darlene Craviotto's genuinely baffling hybrid from 1982 wants to laugh, cry, rape, preach and finally embrace us in a reassuring hug. Then boxes of pizza are ferried to the foot of the stage by director Joshua Sofer, and the audience is invited up for slices.
Yes, I'm serious. (That last part is pretty cool, actually, though I doubt the playwright wrote it.)
Julie and Alice (Ashlee Lewis and Stacy Foley) are sniping roomies—or at least exasperated Julie snipes at fussy, insecure Alice in an Oscar/Felix-ish Odd Couple Redux—each with issues about us pigs of the opposite sex. Julie was sacked from her job as a secretary for failing to share her sack with her boss. Alice is devastated when her boyfriend bounces back to his wife.
They decide, in order, to: 1) Rape a man; 2) Order pizza; and 3) Rape the pizza man.
Craviotto imagines she can wring hilarity from the seventh-grade-level theory that men can't be raped because you needn't force sex on ball-scratching, lust-fueled walking phalluses for whom the phrase "No means no" would elicit a quizzical, unintelligible grunt.
By raining one-liners down on Act I, Craviotto sets the table for comedy, then serves the damnedest entrée. On balance, rape isn't an uproarious topic. The force of the mere word conjures images of violence, violation and barbarity, an iffy mood-setter for laughs, to say the least.
Even taken as some harmless, feminist revenge-fantasy some women might feel entitled to under the cover of a darkened theater, Pizza fails to stand up to logic, especially given the foundation for Act II: that the hog-tied pizza man's sausage won't stand up. The little soldier won't salute. (This was authored in '82, when force-feeding him Viagra wasn't a narrative option.)
Anyone with a passing familiarity with biology knows that an erection is a physiological response not necessarily implying consent, and that penetration, and therefore rape in the most commonly understood sense, can include sodomy, to which a bound and gagged male is eminently vulnerable.
But those lapses would be forgivable, even admirable, if Craviotto was aiming for all-out laughs. Most comedy relies on exaggeration to varying degrees for comic effect—from the small, observational details of Woody Allen to the broad, hellzapoppin' antics of the Farrelly Brothers—in which parameters of logic are granted a wide berth (Allen) or flat-out suspended (the Farrellys). On that level, though it's impossible to imagine the rape of a woman as funny fodder under any circumstances, male rape could be comic catnip in the hands of a gifted satirist who could render the absurdity of the act secondary to the point of the satire.
But Craviotto demonstrates no such skill. She muddies her own waters by interrupting the farce with dramatic outbursts, especially by the pent-up Julie, bemoaning the un-kept promises of her sunny youth. When comedy suddenly U-turns into drama, comic license gives way to sobering realism, in which the entire male-rape fantasy blows its credibility.
With such a schizoid script, director Sofer hangs tough, but the believability is out of his hands. Still, he stumbles in the more-comic first act, having his actors overplay the buffoonery, with excessive stomping around in mock-anger for emphasis, and allowing awkward pauses between punch lines that toss the verbal rhythms out of sync.
Given that the piece is beyond repair, the show's best assets are its actors. As Julie, Ashlee Lewis, a striking, statuesque blond, has stage presence to burn that transcends her sexiness, similar to the powers wielded last season by Katrina Larsen (The Lion in Winter, Bat Boy: The Musical) at Las Vegas Little Theatre. Channeling the whiny, seemingly bubble-brained Alice, Stacy Foley flexes impressive comic chops.
And as the designated victim, Stevin Zack Knight nicely retains his dignity, no small acting triumph under the circumstances.
And to give credit where it's due, the curtain-call pizza was delish.
Yes, I'm serious.