The Miami Herald Raves About "Sexual Perversity in Chicago"!

THEATER REVIEW
Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago a pleasure for audience
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a play of a certain era: early Mamet, post-sexual revolution, pre-AIDS.

Written in 1974, the play flits from one short scene to the next, providing a snapshot of twentysomething big city ``romance'' and serving as a window into the younger Mamet's mind. This is a work that is funny, foul-mouthed and more than a little misogynistic; still enjoyable, but a harbinger of better things to come from a talented playwright.

The Miami Lakes-based Alliance Theatre Lab is winding up its year with a time-tripping performance of Sexual Perversity. The preshow music is vintage Marvin Gaye, setting a sensual mood as only he could do. The costumes, such as one guy's three-piece suit and wide tie, also say '70s. The rest -- the attitudes, sexual come-ons, fast physical intimacy among strangers -- is classic Mamet.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago follows the romantic fortunes of two guys and two gals.

Bernie Litko (Travis Reiff) is -- to put it succinctly -- a pig. Perpetually on the prowl, he sees women as things to be chatted up, slept with and physically discarded, though they'll linger as the subjects of Bernie's graphic tales of his sexual exploits. Bernie's work buddy Danny Shapiro (David Sirois) seems to be a more evolved type, and he jumps into an actual relationship. But it's not long before this Mamet man reveals that, just under that sensitive surface, he's not so different from Bernie.

Danny's squeeze is Deborah Soloman (Bertha Leal), who jumps into bed and a live-in relationship without much more thought than she'd give to buying a new dress. Not smart. Her tart-tongued roommate, kindergarten teacher Joan Webber (Jehane Serralles), doesn't much care for Danny (or any guy) and can't wait for the inevitable breakup to crow, ``I told you so.''

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo keeps the play hurtling forward as he turns actors who weren't born when the play was written into spot-on interpreters of Mamet's crude, fast-paced battle of the sexes. Reiff runs wild with Bernie's outsized vulgarity, Serralles gets Joan's frostiness, and Leal finds Deborah's empathetic vulnerability. Sirois does wonderfully layered work as Danny, sliding from decency to nastiness so convincingly that you feel as let down as Deborah does by a good guy gone bad.

Though Alliance still needs to raise its game when it comes to design work, its production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago gives four talented young actors the chance to take a walk on the wild side through Mamet's outrageous, R-rated world.