LET`S HAVE SEX
289 Pirie St, Adelaide, Australia
March 19, 2006
DON`T be misled by the title, or deterred by the venue.
This funny, sometimes bleak comedy by Russian playwright Valentin Krasnogorov features five characters intent on talking about sex without actually having any.
A sex-starved wife (Vicci Laughton) pleads with her repressed husband (Oliver de Rohan) for it, and a sexually inexperienced girl (Nicole Hartnett) tries her luck with a psychology professor and sexologist (Aaron MacDonald) who`d rather retreat to academia.
They, and a nurse (Greta Gramazio) who appears towards the end, exist in a claustrophobic world from which they all seek to escape.
It is wonderfully existentialist, an articulate examination of sexual attitudes and conventions so familiar to all of us.
Sahil Choujar shows a fine hand as a director, and the performances are surThe second act just needs to pick up the pace.
***
NICK CARROLL
? Review published in the Portside Messenger, 1-3-06, p. 28.
The 2006 Adelaide Fringe sees the Australian premiere of Let`s Have Sex, a comedy by famed Russian playwright Valentin Krasnogorov. Hailed as a masterpiece upon the Russian stage, Let`s Have Sex has been praised to be "Beautifully intricate" (Helen Yampolskoy) and "A unique protest against the grayness of life." (News of Kharkov).
In a gilded cage of psychological construction, five anonymous characters tactlessly place their raging hormones on display. Grotesquely marred by self doubt and confusion they converse over their endless obsession with sex. The frivolous title masks the depth of the production: Let`s Have Sex is as complicated and tragic as it is bitingly funny. It is a comedy, but it would not be wrong to describe it as a tragedy, a psychological drama or a piece of absurd, paradoxical philosophy.
The play is structured as a rondo - a downward spiral into dark oubliettes of the mind and heart. The characters are motivated not, as is immediately apparent, by the desire for sex, but by their need to escape the loneliness and problems of their lives. The Wife desires to have sex but not necessarily with her husband. The Husband is a failing business man that can barely speak the word `sex` let alone express his own sexual frustrations. The Professor, a questionably infamous sexologist, claims the ability to solve each character`s problems whilst in complete denial of his own. The Girl, a virgin extraordinaire, wishes desperately to have sex yet sabotages each opportunity she is confronted with. And finally The Sister, driven mad by her own thoughts and those she cares for, is merely tired of life but cannot escape it.
Yet, in such seclusion how is it possible to tell who is brazenly baring their soul and who is pretending to be something they are not?
Starring local talent Aaron MacDonald and introducing exciting newcomers Nicole Hartnett, Vicci Laughton, Greta Gramazio and Oliver de Rohan, this enthralling and absorbing play promises a bitingly amusing tease as consummation remains as elusive as a mirage, assuring to quench the thirst of those dying in the desert yet proving to be ultimately unattainable.
