An art photographer, who is as famous as the celebrities he shoots, starts having sex with a girl who is in ninth grade, and takes pictures of her naked while she’s sleeping in his bed, without her knowledge or consent. Forty years later, he has died and his widow discovers the photographs. She views one in particular as a masterpiece, the best work of art he ever created. But when his model finds out about it, the girl, now a middle-aged woman, considers it rape, and wants the photograph destroyed.

This is the story in “Transgression,” a play by Terry Curtin Fox that tries, without great success, to dramatize the longstanding ethical debate about artists vs. their art, which is summed up in the play by an exchange between the photographer’s widow Gina (Jane Ives) and his now grown-up model Robin (Susan Bennett): 

Gina: “The behavior is inexcusable. The work transcends the man.”
Robin: “Bullshit.”

The questions prompted by the subject are not trivial. They confront any art lover who considers himself a decent human, given that  – as the museum curator Martin (Yuval Boim) puts it in the play — “the world is full of great art made by miserable men.” Should your newfound knowledge of any artist’s transgressions – be they a photographer or sculptor or filmmaker – change your perception of what they created? Does it depend on how great the art versus how great the transgression? And does it matter if the artist lived far in the past – like the Renaissance painter Caravaggio and the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, who were both murderers, or the composer Wagner, whose antisemitism inspired the Nazis (all three of whom are name-dropped in “Transgression”) – or if they are contemporary?  

“Transgression” bounces between two eras, 2010, when the widow Gina discovers the photographs, and 1970, when the photographer Norman Lewis (James Jelkin) has his dalliance, and his secret photography sessions, with the young Robin (Ivy Rose.)  He also has sex with, and photographs, Robin’s mother (portrayed by Bennett.) The adult Robin makes clear that the year-long long-ago affair caused her severe and permanent emotional damage, leading her to drug abuse, and an inability to either trust or love anybody. Right before intermission, we learn that Norman also took secret videos when he was having sex with the women whom he subsequently photographed – with the suggestion that his personal pornography might have been part of his “artistic process.”

So, in other words, the guy was a creep.

Jelkin plays Norman straight – no mustache-twirling – which is to his credit, and the credit of director Avra Fox-Lerner (who is the playwright’s daughter.) But the problem is, we must also take on faith that Norman was the “genius” that Gina says he was, and that the photograph of Robin is, as both Gina and Martin the curator call it, a “masterpiece.” We never see the photograph. It’s barely described (no pun intended.) There’s a line of dialogue that what makes it great is not just the composition and the lighting but that “there is so much fucking love in that photo.” (Again, probably not an intentional play on words.) Norman is a fictional character, rather than somebody whose art we’ve gotten to know and appreciate over our lifetime. So it’s hard for us to embrace the “art transcends” argument in the abstract, while the “inexcusable behavior’ is so concrete and specific. The play thus fails to establish an engaging or credible dilemma.

We’re left with some dramatic lines — Gina, who feels as betrayed as Robin, can no longer find comfort in the beauty of Norman’s art, because it “reminds me of his lies” – and a few thought-provoking scenes, mostly hypotheticals. At one point, adult Robin asks Martin what he would have done if he knew what kind of photograph Norman was planning to take

Martin: I would tell him to stop
Robin: But then this great work would never come into existence…
Martin: I could not in good conscience participate in its creation. Because the act was a violation….If he’d laughed in my face…would I have called the cops, knowing that I could send Norman Lewis to jail? I don’t know that I could have done that. Tell Gina? I’d be hurting her as well as hurting him.

But since the photograph does exist, he is determined to preserve it.

At another point, Norman (or actually his ghost) says bluntly that, for the sake of his art, “there is not a human being I would not exploit.”  This very attitude has been handled on stage by playwrights such as Ibsen in “When We Dead Awaken,“ which some scholars believe was inspired by sculptor Auguste Rodin’s relationship with his model, muse and lover Camille Claudel. It’s among the issues that Fox touches on that are worth contemplating.

 But there is ultimately just not enough drama or provocative discourse in “Transgression” to justify its two hours.

Transgression
HERE through August 2
Running time: Two hours, including an intermission.
Tickets: $10 (10 “access” tickets at each performance), $25  (“standard”/”general admission”); you can choose to pay more
Written by Terry Curtin Fox
Directed by Avra Fox-Lerner
Scenic design by Kate Rance, costume design by Annie Simon, and lighting design by Lauren Parrish. Ander Agudo is the sound designer, SJ Reynolds is the props designer, Judi Lewis Ockler is the intimacy director and Huai Huang is the stage manager
Cast: Susan Bennett as Adult Robin/Robin’s Mom,Yuval Boim as Martin, Jane Ives as Gina, James Jelkin as Norman, and  Ivy Rose as Young Robin.