‘Sexual Perversity’ at Civic Theatre

Before David Mamet blistered the nation’s eardrums with “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “American Buffalo” and “Hoffa,” he shook up the Windy City with “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.”

Now, more than 30 years later, the play will shake up the Spokane Civic Theatre’s smaller, downstairs “black box” stage, the Firth Chew Studio Theatre.

This 1975 play was a shocking (for the time) satire of the sexual selfishness, permissiveness and occasional ugliness of that decade. It follows the brief and volatile relationship of Danny and Deborah, who wind up in bed together shortly after meeting. Only later do they get around to arranging an actual dinner date.

This short play, originally presented as a one-act, observes this relationship mostly from the perspective of their best friends, Bernard and Joan. They, too, become a couple.

“Bernard and Joan are the angrier pair,” wrote Bruce Weber of The New York Times after a 2000 revival. “He is a vulgar sexist prone to explosive rants against the behavior of women, although he is equally ardent in admiration of their body parts.”

Bernard delivers one of the play’s most famous speeches, a wild tale about a girl turned on by combat fantasies.

Joan is a schoolteacher, “prematurely bitter and prone to take out her frustrations on her preschoolers,” said Weber.

In typical Mamet style, don’t expect much lip service paid to romance. The play leaves, in Weber’s words, “everyone energetically miserable at the end.”

Do, however, expect Mamet’s trademark obscene dialogue. The Civic warns that the play “contains adult language and is not suitable for children,” which may be an understatement.

Yet does it remain shocking – and relevant – in this new century?

Weber opined that the 2000 revival evoked a feeling of near-nostalgia for that pre-AIDS era; he called it an “entertaining period piece” and “campy artifact.”

London critic Emma French, however, called a 2003 London revival “more than a period piece.”

That production packed in audiences because of its stars: Matthew Perry (“Friends”), Hank Azaria and Minnie Driver. French called it an “unflinching exploration of the 1970s moral maze.”

The Civic’s production is directed by Wes Deitrick. The cast consists of Paul Villabrille, Damon Mentzer, Joelene Smith and Shalya Keating.