Mae West’s unbearable Sex is a sham at Shaw
Somewhere out there, I hope someone’s writing a show about the controversy surrounding Mae West’s 1926 play “Sex.” Because it’s almost guaranteed to be more interesting than the play itself.
There are some reclamation projects that serve the Shaw Festival well — a series of Harley Granville Barker plays in the ’90s were a revelation — but some, like “Sex,” make you wonder what they were thinking. They make you question what possible reason the company would waste its resources, its talent and, most of all, our time.
It is one of the most dismal, pointless things the company has staged in several years, possibly ever. It was closed by police during its initial New York run, which seems to be the only gimmick it survives on. As a play — as an actual thing worth seeing and thinking about — it’s a trash heap.
Mae West was a lot of things — movie star, icon, comedian, groundbreaker. Playwright she was not.
As the legend goes, West was arrested nearly a year after the show opened at Daly’s 63rd Street Theatre. She was charged with obscenity and sentenced to 10 days in jail, of which she served eight. The resulting publicity helped her become one of the biggest movie stars in the world during the 1930s.
Lost in the hoopla is “Sex” itself, and for good reason. It has rarely been revived, and this Shaw production is the Canadian première. Up to now, it was no great loss. Aside from its cobwebby plot and dreadful dialogue, whatever shock value this play had is long gone. It was once blamed by police for “corrupting the morals of youth” — the only thing it corrupts now is this Shaw season that was enjoying a nice comeback from last year.
The story, as it were, follows a Montreal prostitute named Margy (Diana Donnelly), using her body and street smarts to pursue a better life while contending with her thuggish pimp Rocky (Kristopher Bowman). Salvation appears to arrive when a young millionaire named Jimmy (Julia Course) falls for her at a club in Haiti. Despite being wary that
he’ll uncover her Montreal past, she agrees to meet his rich parents at their New York home.
These characters have no depth and even less appeal. This isn’t the funny “I’ve been in more laps than a napkin” Mae West here, it’s someone writing what was once taboo and risqué in the most clichéd way possible. The story moves at a maddening crawl getting to the obvious, and there’s no modern finesse to make it bearable.
What’s worse, this is directed by Peter Hinton-Davis as if there’s some profound point behind it all. It begins with the cast on stage, staring out at the audience, then saying “sex” together like we’re breaching some forbidden fruit. Unless a comedy follows, it’s a laughably pretentious way to start a show.
Hinton-Davis also made the weird decision to do this as a gender-fluid show, with guys playing women and vice versa. In a great play, this is a non-factor. In a show like this, you’re left wondering why Margy’s friend is played by Jonathan Tan in a dress. It’s awkward, it’s a distraction, and it makes no sense.
If that wasn’t cumbersome enough, certain cast members play dual roles in the show while others do not, leaving you to decipher who’s who in any given scene. One moment near the end sees Ric Reid playing someone different from the character he played earlier, but Fiona Byrne does not. It’s just another confusing decision that detracts from a play with a whole mess of problems as it is. In the end, “Sex” is a fraud — a play undeserving of the Shaw Festival stage and the talent involved.