Theater: Sew In Love

The following review is brought to you by our sponsor, the International Association of Professional Spoilers, always dedicated to the ruination of your evening.

In the final scene of Stitching, Anthony Neilson’s two-hander about a couple that should never have been a couple, the female, Abby, played by spitfire Israeli actress Meital Dohan, reveals that she’s done something to her privates that’s a horrific form of genital mutilation. Not that there’s any genital mutilation that isn’t degrading and demoralizing, but Abby’s is disturbing to an exponential degree—among the worst of the tribal rites you read about in U.N. reports and news accounts.

Other critics have paused at this point in their reviews to announce they’ll go not one step further with descriptions of Abby’s abhorrent action. That’s fine and fair, but if you can read English, you’ll figure out what Abby does by the very title of Neilson’s play. I only mention this because it underscores one of the play’s problems—it too often favors superficial obviousness when limning key narrative blanks would do.

By the time Abby reveals her sewn-up crotch to her boyfriend Stuart—essayed with keen wit and well-grounded irony by Gian Murray Gianino—we’ve witnessed scenes from the lives of this pair skirt back and forth in time. Stitching’s first scene finds them battling the major crisis of their relationship—her unwanted, unexpected pregnancy; the second shows us Stuart bringing her back to his modest studio apartment for the first time (superb set and lighting by Garin Marshall) and paying her for sex.

We learn Abby’s a student, but that’s about it. Otherwise, there’s precious little information conveyed about her background or his, and nothing about his profession, although we presume he must have a job of some kind or he couldn’t afford to hire her. Her naiveté is laid bare, if you will, when she announces she’ll charge less for intercourse than oral sex and less for oral sex than for a hand-job. Abby’s a piece of work—we know that.

We also learn that Stuart achieved his first orgasm while thumbing through war photography. That, in turn, helps us understand why rough sex with Abby turns him on so much. But why does Abby like it, and where does her raging self-hatred—and outward anger—come from? (Indeed, if her neurosis isn’t extreme self-hatred, why would she sew up her vagina?) Dohan is intense, fiery, sexy, and given to the hot alluring pout, but because Abby is such a glibly written character, it’s impossible to accept her as real. British critic Aleks Sierz has coined the term “In-Yer-Face Theatre” to explain this style of play, but it’s seems more like in-your-dreams to me: I don’t know what Stuart sees in Abby that makes him doggedly transform her from being a prostitute into a girlfriend.

Director Timothy Haskell makes some shrewd choices and some mystifying ones. He allows the actors to play each scene as an autonomous dramatic event, with its own emotional peaks and troughs; each could stand as its own one-act or Webisode. Neilson’s time-bending structure lends itself to this modus operandi, but here’s the thing: Even when the chronology inside the world of a play has been fractured, the experience of watching it is always on the forward march.

Haskell also has the unenviable task of having to stage a monologue for Stuart near the end of the play. It’s the only case of direct address in the piece, and as such it’s a dramatically false, if perfectly wrought, moment. We’ve spent 70 minutes watching these romantic dunderheads illustrate that they can’t live with each other, without each other, or with themselves. No wonder, then, the title.

Through July 19. The Wild Project, 195 E. 3rd St. (betw. Avenue A & B), 212-352-3101; Mon.-Tues. 7; Wed.-Sat. 8; Sat. 2, $10-$45.