January 27-February 2, 2005

theater

The Mind in the Mirror

by Toby Zinman

Nicaragua? Cuba? Honduras? Gen. Raoul can't remember which Central American country he was dictator of, although playwright Lee Blessing can. Twenty-five years ago in El Salvador, among the many heinous war crimes committed, one made headlines: Three American nuns and a Catholic lay worker were raped and murdered by the Salvadoran military. Eventually Blessing's generic general is tried in Florida, and, as in real life, acquitted.

Whores is a fantasia, a dip into the general's psyche, where his sexual fantasies — fueled by his impotence — govern his every thought. Thus, four nuns morph into whores, who morph into his wife and children, who morph into porn filmmakers, who morph into the trial lawyers prosecuting him. The triumph of the splendid cast is that they keep us interested in characters who aren't really people, nor even ideas, but merely dramatic conceits. The triumph of Seth Rozin's direction is that he keeps the repetitious play lively and theatrical and keeps the vulgarity inoffensive, although this may not be in the show's best interest.

Paul Meshejian plays Raoul with weird and repulsive boyish charm; he seems too bewildered to be evil, and yet, of course he is. The four women are brilliant, each in her own way, and voluptuous, each in her own way: Janis Dardaris, Erin Reilly, Christie Parker and Grace Gonglewski slide seamlessly from black lingerie to plaid shirts and from lurid to earnest. Daniel Boylen's set of smoked, mirrored screens creates the fractured and endlessly self-reflective arena of the general's mind.

The trouble with writing a play enclosed by such a banal mind is that you're stuck with banality. There are some good lines. On taking dancing lessons: "You can't dance on someone's grave unless you can dance"; on the U.S. government's support of dictators: "Lift up the poor is what you say; manage the poor is what you mean." But despite its satiric sex and sincere speechifying, Whores defangs the malevolence and wears out its jokes long before it's over.

WHORES Through Feb. 13, InterAct Theatre at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-568-8079