“Good beginning. Killer ending. No middle.”
That’s how Avery Ferris assesses a hypothesis offered by his sister Alma that might explain whether their congressman father killed the missing intern he was sleeping with.
That also rather accurately describes Rob Handel’s compelling and incisive new play “Aphrodisiac,” which uses notorious Beltway sex scandals as a backdrop to tell a more universal tale about all adult children who discover that parents maintain public and private personas, especially with their kids.
“Aphrodisiac,” playing at the Curious Theatre, is a cynical black comedy that’s bathed in a kind of playfulness. We open in a restaurant: A congressman is covertly meeting with his breathless intern. She’s pregnant, she says. As you might guess, the stemware takes the worst of it.
But this scene is not what it appears to be, for these two are role-playing. Alma is playing the intern, Avery the politico explicitly modeled after Gary Condit, the California congressman whose intern’s skeletal remains were dug up in a park a year after she went missing.
Though Condit’s kids must surely have wondered whether their dad had a hand in the murder of Chandra Levy, it’s not likely they would resort to a child’s party game to find out.
But it works as a theatrical device because it poignantly underscores their ignorance and detachment. They need to know the truth, but their primary sources of information are their parents and the media – neither of which are reliable. So what does that leave them but their own gruesome imaginations and macabre speculation? This is what they’ve been reduced to: “Did he do it? How? Strangulation? Incineration?”
The two stand no chance of answering the big question, but they do arrive at certain truths about their parents: Dad is a serial philanderer who targets women Alma’s age. So has he ever looked at her that way, Alma now wonders between gulps of whiskey? And their mother? She’s a robot. The only thing that separates her from the dead intern is that 34 years ago, Dad married her.
Director Bonnie Metzgar’s staging is notable for its subtle light and sound enhancement, and a trio of excellent actors. But it may be best remembered for the overdue emergence of Jess Robblee as Alma. She’s a wildly talented children’s theater actor, but in this, her first real mainstage opportunity, she’s created an Alma who’s a sympathetic cauldron of self-destructive inquisitiveness. She’s wonderfully paired with a graciously modest Josh Robinson as brother Avery.
And what of that third person? It’s a surprise intern ex-machina that on paper might read like a cheap trick, a comic device to drum up obvious and needed laughs at the end.
But thanks to the latest remarkable turn by actor Mare Trevathan, this surprise cameo not only humanizes one of the most notorious figures in Beltway scandal history (and we’re not talking Levy), it offers strangely credible insight into those intoxicated young women swept up by the world’s most powerful men like an entitlement, only to be cast aside.
Thanks to this interjection, the story ends with as much intrigue as it begins. But things lose their urgency in the middle, when Avery goes off on a long tangent in which the playwright draws already evident parallels between the seduction of political celebrity and pop-culture celebrity. Robinson is a thoughtful, precise actor, but impressions of Willie Nelson, Keith Richards and Bill Clinton are not his strength.
Alma patiently sits out this unnecessary divergence, and that didn’t sit well with me. As the youngest of eight, I can tell you that when it comes to any brother and sister, there is dialogue – monologue does not exist. Yes, this script is predicated on storytelling, but no real sibling would ever cede the floor as long as these two do.
My hope is that Handel continues to prune and develop what is at its heart an excellent piece of writing. The hard part is done. He’s taken us down uncomfortable and compelling terrain in an entertaining way, with a premise that is as compelling as its relevance is obvious.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Aphrodisiac” | *** RATING
DRAMA|Curious Theatre|Written by Rob Handel|Directed by Bonnie Metzgar|Starring Josh Robinson, Jessica Robblee and Mare Trevathan|THROUGH FEB. 24|At 1080 Acoma St. |8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|90 minutes, no intermission |$24-$28 (2-for-1 Thursdays)|303-623-0524
or curioustheatre.org
