I was maybe 15 years old when a middle-aged man stopped me on the street and asked me if I was a swinger. I suddenly remembered the encounter while watching the soft porn comedy “The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits,” perhaps because I had a similar reaction: I am the wrong audience for this. That could be the reason why I found the play, presented as part of the International Fringe Encore Series, smarmy and excruciating. It could also be because of Michael Shaw Fisher’s clunky script and his largely awkward direction, as well as some terrible acting.
The play begins with married couple Bobby and Elise preparing for their dinner guests, Bobby’s ex-wife Danielle and her new husband Carson, who had asked to be invited. Bobby puts Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” on the record player, to which Elise objects, saying it’s too “suggestive.”
“’Suggestive,’ wow,” Bobby reacts. “You think they’re going to be thinking about sex? Why would that even come up?”
Meanwhile, Elise is putting together a meal full of well-known aphrodisiacs – pomegranate soup, oysters, asparagus and chocolate fondue. We’re asked to believe that Elise didn’t know they were aphrodisiacs. I suspect this is supposed to be humorous.
Bobby then tells Elise that Carson is almost a billionaire and Danielle is a sex therapist with a best-selling book “Getting Back On Top” – none of which, we are asked to believe, Elise knew when she agreed to invite them to her home. (We learn later that Carson was once Bobby’s boss, something else he neglected to tell his wife.) By contrast, Bobby is an unpublished writer and a substitute teacher; Elise (we later learn) had a catering business that went bust when her business partner went to jail for tax fraud.
The rich couple arrives with a half-dozen bottles of fine wine from their vineyard, and, eventually, a proposition: Danielle wants Bobby to impregnate her. And Carson wants to watch them have sex together. Carson offers them ten cents a sperm cell – or about $20 million.
Elise, who is initially appalled at the proposal, changes her mind when she hears how much money is involved – and indeed, adds her own “stipulation” — that Carson must have sex with her for an additional five million. Danielle approves and adds her own stipulation: that Elise sleep with her too….
The orgy that follows, presented in lightning-quick tableaux in-between blackouts, are the best-directed scenes of the otherwise lackluster production.
“The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits” ends with a couple of twists, one that is meant to be savage, the other clever; neither of them is plausible enough to withstand five seconds’ worth of scrutiny. There are clues we are supposed to view the play as a kind of raunchy version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” One clue is that the rich couple are catty with one another. Another clue is, like much of the play, ham-handed: In the first scene, when Elise asks Bobby about the couple she is about to meet, she says: “Are you going to give me the character breakdown or what, Edward Albee?”
The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits
SoHo Playhouse through March 28
Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $45
Written and directed by Michael Shaw Fisher
Set design by Mia Criss, props and costumes by Alli Miller-Fisher, lighting design by Charlie Kilgore,
Cast: Richardson Cisneros-Jones as Carson, Rebecca Larsen as Danielle, Leigh Wulff as Elise, and Schoen Hodges as Bobby.
