God of Desire

TAINTED LOVE: in God of Desire, Jason Liebman plays the very religious -- and very sexual -- Edward, who falls in love with a young dancer (Lori McNally).

by Toby Zinman

InterAct has always had a reputation for preachy plays; this time they have just about literalized it with a long-winded sermon called God Of Desire, a nondramatic play by Dick Goldberg, who apparently has Jewish Issues by the truckload. Well, it's more than a sermon: It's a bar mitzvah speech and a high school graduation speech as well, so it's hard to decide if this show is actually more boring than it is embarrassing (not because of onstage nude masturbation but because people talk in the language of ladies' softcore porn novels, i.e., "billows of sperm").

OK. I've decided. Boring wins. Much of the play is narrated face front to the audience, but where there is dialogue, not a single line sounds as though a human being would actually speak it. For example: Edward, as a 13-year-old, says to his grandfather, "At the core of each of us is something holy and godlike," or, later, when his mother confronts him, "I wish Zaydie were alive so I could thrust you in front of him so he could see what his inanity has wrought." More than two hours of this stuff! We are never allowed to learn anything from the characters' behavior, since they tell us the meaning of their behavior themselves, and their view is never challenged by the play.

The plot follows Edward (Jason Liebman) from boyhood to young manhood. He is intellectual like his mother (Nancy Boykin), but after the death of his father, who was a great musician, Edward feels a deep connection to his father's presence through dreams of music; these dreams are sexual in their ecstatic yearning. Then his beloved grandfather (Harry Philibosian) dies, and the dreams continue, urging Edward to find his "gift." The Play's Themes are conveyed by these Symbolic Dreams, each filled with Literary Images. The kid's obsession with his dead father and dead grandfather sounds (to me) deeply troubled, but nobody in the play seems to notice.

He studies Jewish theology and tradition under his rabbi (Seth Reichgott, who speaks entirely in pulpit head tones), and Edward's religious quest is intensified by falling in love with a young dancer (Lori McNally) who understands him emotionally and physically with an understanding that in a teenage girl passeth understanding.

As if to provide the requisite "conflict" any play needs, Goldberg concocts confusing difficulties based on Judaism's supposed denial/restraint of sexuality. Why this conflict (if it exists) should interest the audience, the play never makes clear. Goldberg resorts to sending his protagonist to a rigid sect which follows some obscure rabbinical teaching. The other playwriting requisite, comic relief, is provided by a "regular" kid, Ben, played by Michael Nathanson with delivery and body language so cliche that he is more a cartoon than character.

The upshot is that God and Sexuality are One, discovered through epiphanic masturbation. Thus the title.

Seth Rozin directs.

GOD OF DESIRE Through June 6, InterAct Theatre Company at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-568-8079

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