Stripped of the hullabaloo created by love, morality and taboo, what is the sexual act? A thirst-quenching transaction, the earth moves or it doesn’t. Money or some other currency changes hands. Amy Lee Lavoie’s play Rabbit Rabbit explores the brave new world of 21st century sexuality by way of familiar dramatic archetypes: a prostitute and her trick.
Britney (Ashley Dunn) is sixteen, though for the client in question, she’s being paid to act and look much younger, dress like a ballerina, shave her pubes, wear a dollar store tiara. Larry (Howard Rosenstein) is a professional clown who checks into a tawdry hotel every week hoping to satisfy his fantasies, thereby curbing an urge to hit on little girls at birthday parties where he works.
A rich situation. Unfortunately, Lavoie’s attempt to dramatize what goes on between the two falls flat. All the right elements for drama are present, but the dialogue skips glibly over moments that should have gripped the audience by the neck. After a sixty-minute real-time exchange, we don’t know much more than we might have learned from a photograph with caption, much less care about their plight.
Britney natters incessantly, finally, without provocation, spilling her heart out. Larry is revolted when she flashes her honeydew melon-sized breasts (twice). Explaining his own child-specific needs, he’s more pathetic than scary. Neither is characterised beyond the cartoon outlines of their costumes (beautifully designed by Ariane Genet de Miomande, as is the set).
The dialogue is chirpy, the two actors clearly enjoy their puppet roles and the hour slides by. But the play is stuck in the voyeuristic. In the end, the whole thing is just far too nice. Nobody bleeds. Nobody really needs to cry. What happens onstage feels strangely distant, arousing curiosity but emotionally, distancing.
As for the directing, since I was directed to a seat behind the stage, (literally) looking down onto the top of the actors’ heads, I can hardly tell what kind of picture Guy Sprung’s staging offered the majority of those present, who were facing the action. I did notice the play opened with Larry fully into his ridiculous clown suit, and Britney lounging in her fairy getup. It might have been better to see them dress for sex. At least we’d have visual clues as to who they are in real life.
Isn’t it ironic, I was thinking on the way home. Voyeurism gives rise to a strangely moral point of view. Robbed of a chance to care about real people by means of fully realised characters, the voyeur ends up blaming our screwed-up world, then inevitably ourselves. A “conspiracy of blindness”, thunders the director in his program note.
I’d say it’s far worse. A plague of shallowness.
Rabbit Rabbit continues at the Bain St-Michel, 5300 St-Dominique St. through Nov 29. Box office: 514-987-1774 ext 104. For schedule details and preview, go to the Infinitheatre site.
