Renowned playwright and author David Mamet has brought his knack for vulgar dialogue and male exploitation to Madison with his 2005 off-Broadway play. “Romance.” The small show, which will be showing at the Bartell Theatre through the end of the week, is produced by Strollers Theatre and directed by Karen Saari.
The play begins and ends as a farcical courtroom drama ruled over by an ineffectual judge plagued by allergies and forgetfulness. The defendant, charged of an ambiguous crime, minces over the possibilities of forgetting a trip to Hawaii and the difference between a chiropractor and a chiropodist — a British term for afoot doctor. While the prosecutor attempts to grill the defendant, the judge interrupts proceedings incessantly to make sure he has taken his allergy pill, which eventually results in mild drowsiness and a courtroom recess.
The second scene, a vulgar standoff between the Jewish defendant and his Christian lawyer, consists of the two hurling insults about their respective religions, which thrives in obscenity and lingers on stereotypes as common as Jewish trickery and as dirty as priestly child molestation. Paul Milisch plays the defendant and develops his character with Jewish stereotypes that are crucial to this scene. This is when the play begins to reveal its true nature and build itself a nest of stereotypical misrepresentation.
The next scene delves into the domestic squabbles of the homosexual prosecutor and his partner, Bunny. Played by Scott Albert Bennett, Bunny is a sassy creature stuffed into scandalous underwear and only slightly hidden by a waist-high apron. The prosecutor, an insensitive lover played by Matthew Korda, really does come off as an asshole as his dear, sweet Bunny cries so hard his contact comes out. Though only involved in about a third of the play, Bennett manages to steal a few scenes with a glorification of effeminacy that one would expect from a gay character named Bunny.
Another notable performance is that of Lee Waldhart, former “Funniest Man in Wisconsin” and an experienced comedian, who tends to steal the show when Bunny is not present as an ill-placed judge with an attention span that steadily and rapidly decreases over the course of the show. Through the judge’s tangential ramblings and constant interruptions of the courtroom proceedings, Waldhart is able to completely irritate the rest of the cast while getting laughs from the audience.
The all-male cast has energy and pulls off Mamet’s satirical and highly masculine style well, but the script itself comes up short. Although it ventures into many controversial topics and leaves no obscene stone unturned, the subjects of religious prejudice and pedophilia are used to evaluate the reasonableness of peace, seriously, and make the whole affair seem a bit forced. In a play where three or more characters are gay, a judge alludes to molesting his daughters and a bailiff claims to have had sex with a goose, no boundaries seem to exist in the realm of “Romance.” The show itself, however, did produce many laughs and provided an enjoyable experience.
“Romance” runs through September 5 at the Bartell Theatre. Visit www.madstage.com/bartell for tickets or for more information.
