Pornocopia

By T. E. Kalem

Over the centuries, there have been two kinds of theater, the elitist and the vulgarian. In Aristophanic comedies, male characters were endowed with huge prop phalli with which they thwacked each other. Early forms of the Kabuki theater were closed down by the shogun in 17th century Japan for encouraging prostitution and inciting lewd homosexual byplay on and off stage. Italy's commedia dell'arte was frequently obscene in word and gesture.

The U.S. brand of popular vulgar theater was burlesque, which nurtured many distinguished clowns and comedians, including W.C. Fields, Bert Lahr, Bobby Clark and Buster Keaton. In recent seasons, vulgar theater has again emerged in both the best and the worst senses, with nudity, simulated sexual acts and the unfettered use of four-letter words. Hair, Che and Oh! Calcutta! belong to this group, as does the latest entry, The Dirtiest Show in Town. Those who deplore these shows regard them as the flagrant commercial exploitation of filth. That attitude is far too simple; when three out of the top four non-fiction bestsellers across the nation are titled Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), The Sensuous Woman and Human Sexual Inadequacy, the stage is bound to reflect such rapt, obvious and pervasive interest.

Candid Display. In the contemporary theater there is usually some attempt to cloak the evening's activities in a lofty rationale of protest. The Dirtiest Show in Town emits the mandatory blasts at the Viet Nam War, air pollution, urban blight and computerized conformity. So what else is new? Something of durable human concern and curiosity that cannot be graphically described: scenes of fornication, cunnilingus, fellatio, communal couplings and a candid display of homosexual and lesbian preferences.

On that level, The Dirtiest Show in Town is surprisingly amusing. The nudes are graceful, handsome and refreshingly unselfconscious. Acting skill is secondary in group enterprises of this sort, but Jeffrey Herman is kinkily personable and quite funny as a gay Jew, and Madeleine le Roux plays a tall blonde lesbian with the icy authority of a lady storm trooper. Playwright Tom Eyen is perhaps the best guide to the underlying seriousness that animates his play even at its silliest and most scandalous: "We're getting the new sexual freedom suddenly, and we don't know how to cope with it, which is a big pollution in itself."

The show raises another question. Apart from the proper protection of minors, does not the age-old tradition of the theater assert its inalienable if profane right to be pornographic?

. T. E. Kalem

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