Review: THE SENSUALITY PARTY Is All Talk

Justin Kuritzkes' THE SENSUALITY PARTY, developed through The New Group's New Group/New Works program, begins with college student Speaker delivering a fourteen-page monologue describing an orgy he attended freshman year. The fellow is so thorough with details about what other people were doing that it might make you wonder if he was paying much attention to his own partners.

The site-specific play tours college common rooms and student unions throughout the five boroughs, with cast members seated with audiences members in a circle of chairs.

Director Danya Taymor has Jake Horowitz, as Speaker, seated for the duration of his lengthy opening speech, speaking with a cold, blasé attitude as he describes how "Stevie is f-ing Barry. And Linda is getting fucked by Todd. And Allison is taking a break from being fucked so that she can have a little bit more to drink. In general, everyone is either in the middle of f-ing or in between f-ing."

As with Lenny Bruce's famous routine where he keeps repeating ethnic slurs, Horowitz uses the word "fuck" and its variations so many times in the play that it barely means anything. That may be the intention, but it's also quite monotonous.

"We thought 'orgy' sounded vulgar," Speaker says by way of explaining why he and four friends decided to call their Saturday night romp a sensuality party.

Sensuality didn't seem to be present that night. Among the details, Speaker describes how the copulating of one pair, Barry and Alison, turned violent and non-consensual. Speaker masturbated to the scene while another participant, Todd, broke it up.

Speaker leaves and two other participants, roommates Linda (Layla Khoshnoudi) and Stevie (Catherine Combs), talk about their sexual fantasies. Linda's, described in a lengthy monologue, is extremely violent.

Next Todd (Rowan Vickers) has a monologue about the general campus culture in regards to sex, and of how he stopped Barry from raping Alison. He brings up how the orgy took place on an anniversary of 9/11, and the collapse of the towers becomes the setting for a sex fantasy Barry (Jeff Cuttler) and Allison (Katherine Folk-Sullivan) share when they meet while participating in Occupy Wall Street.

While the subjects of campus rape and the lingering effects of September 11th are important ones to explore through drama, THE SENSUALITY PARTY is a dull, garbled mess.

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