Review: GUILTY PLEASURES: AN UNAPOLOGETIC COMEDY BY KEN LEVINE at Black Box PAC

The Black Box PAC loves staging plays that center on navigating the dynamics of complex  modern-day romantic relationships. (It really should be their theatrical trademark!) 

The idea of long-lasting love between two people is a plausible proposition and a noble undertaking (who doesn’t have high hopes of one day riding off into the sunset with their betrothed as at least a rite of passage in their distinguished legacy?) However, in the wavering fashion of most 21st Century relationships, reality rears its ugly head after the rose-colored glasses have been taken off. Between three to seven years into what was anticipated to be wedded bliss, some couples — whose relationship was once filled with hand-holding trips to P.C. Richard and eskimo kisses — now finds it’s not exactly a cakewalk to cohabitate with the same person for life. Even if that person is someone they call their soulmate.

Once the honeymoon phase dissolves, they’ve entered the disillusionment and distraction phase of their union. Suddenly, the quirks that the couple once found endearing become the very deterrent that drives a wedge between them. When feeling like their romantic love is unraveling and now holding on by a thread, an adventure is in the cards to help them tie a knot and hold on. Much like cornball team-building activities at a work setting, couples may consider an excursion to reignite their passion. Not something too laid-back, like a cabin in the Catskills, whose echoey, picturesque, cricket-sounding emptiness could incite the opposite — boredom, eye rolls and petty bickering over ecstatic peace and intimacy. Instead, they opt for a more amusing activity.  

In the Black Box PAC’s staging of Ken Levine’s Guilty Pleasures: An Unapologetic Comedy, directed by Founder and Artistic Director Matt Okin with Ilana Schimmel and Michael Gardiner, two sets of couples find no better place to weather the rockiness of their sinking marriages than aboard a cruise ship sailing the enchanted French Riviera.

At first glance, Jinx (Katie North) and Larry Berman (Justin Jager) look very much the perfect pairing, almost like the presumed couple in Grant Wood’s iconic 1930 painting, “American Gothic,” which, according to the artist, “conveys a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression.”

Then, we’re introduced to a fellow wealthy couple in the movie business that they meet while on the ship whose union is also consumed with drowning marital issues: the dapper, hot to trot, cookie-cutter narcissist Peter Drake (Gavin Hammon)— who, if you didn’t do a double take, may mistake for Brad Pitt— and his wife, Charlene Uranga (Erin McMahon) who bears semblance to Britney Spears dressed as the sexy flight attendant in the “Toxic” era. The trip serves to mend their fractured relationships, but using reverse psychology: to evoke a sense of jealousy and temptation in their spouse to ultimately return to their better half.

“God, he is gorgeous,” rudely interjects Jinx with a coquettish grin, as she gives Peter a once-over as he walks by. “Oh, honey child, that man could give me sugar until the cows come home.”

“What?” Asks her husband, bewildered. 

“Sorry,” she offers. “That was my vagina talking.”

Genitalia seems to do most of the talking on this modern-day Love Boat as the couples swap spouses to test the strength of their marriage in this rousing romantic comedy. Although, only one of the couples are successful in achieving intimacy: Peter and Jinx. North and Hammon’s creation of sexual chemistry is so palpable through all of their  wine-fueled waltzes it could make the most even-keeled spectator blush. 

Due to the emotional ties that oftentimes come with being intimate with another person, Jinx and Peter begin to ponder whether there is something between them worth exploring. But when Larry, a spectacled, highly intelligent, hardworking playwright, learns his wife cheats on him with Peter, he feels compelled to settle the score and cheat on his wife with the beautiful, but brainless Charlene. In his fruitless attempts to seduce her, they finally click when she deems him useful when he shares a play he wrote inspired by their vacation with her, as she expresses elation as the starring role. But, the real draw of this play is the complexity of Larry’s character. Though possessing every making of a desirable man — intelligent, responsible, caring, having a high moral caliber, and, not to mention, a Pulitzer Prize winner as the cherry on the sundae — he could not accept that Charlene was not attracted to him. The real farce was his neuroses prompting him to make futile attempts to get her to sleep with him when she wasn’t interested. Like many Larrys in the world, it was a blow to his ego to know that he was not desired by every woman and unnecessarily needing to be to quash some frivolous insecurity. This, when he knew deep down, he was not compatible with someone who lacked the vision to notice the beauty in him. Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.

Larry, however, had every right to feel good about his mojo. In one scene, he gives Mr. hot stuff Peter pointers about G-spots before a statue of The David. Larry’s character and his insecurity — often the price one pays for high intelligence — is what makes spectators root for a reconciliation with his wife. Jinx and Peter’s relational conundrum is commonplace — two lustful people trying to figure out if there is something more when the answer is floating around among them: love is seldom a maybe matter. In between stormy nights reflecting the real-life challenge of intimacy between the couples and boisterous arguments begging for interruption, an eccentric-sounding cruise director makes the same annoyingly spontaneous announcement followed by a dragged on word about seeing passengers “outtt… and abouttt.” 

It’s often when I’m "out and about" that I’m hit with realizations — convenient truths that come in the form of answers to situations I was seeking resolutions to in my own life. An understanding. When watching the Black Box PAC’s hilarious, unapologetic performance mimicking real-life banter of the with-it-and-hip and the 21st Century relationship and situationship, it’s easy for any audience member to find themselves living vicariously through the characters and leave with a sense of empowerment as the captain of their life, as it imitates art.

The Black Box PAC will stage From A to Zoo, an exclusive staged reading series of All of Edward Albee’s Plays Sunday, May 29 at 7:30 pm in Englewood, NJ. Admission is free. Information at blackboxpac.com. 

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