REVIEW: Pervert captures life in a porn shop
It turns out Stephen Massicotte and I share something in common: We both spent time working in a porno shop, hoping our experience would inspire a play out of us. However, while “Uncle Smiley’s House of Dirty Love” languishes half-written on one of my old hard drives, “Pervert” is a real concern, brought to you by Northern Light Theatre, and playing nightly at 7:30 through April 17 at the Varscona Theatre.
Tim (Jason Chinn) works the graveyard shift at a porn store, where he is kept company by an oxygen tank-toting customer, Kurt (James Hamiton). Meanwhile, Tim’s steady of three years, Trish (Mary Hulbert) is anxious: Not only have their schedules kept them apart, but she is tired of his jealousy (she’s not the only one). Tim once promised Trish that he would take this job until he got back on his feet. Well, it’s now a year (going on two) later, and Tim has no desire to pull out. This frustrates Trish in more ways than one. The other couple in this story is Mike (Doug Mertz) and Lisa (Jocelyn Alf). They are a stable, but sexually bored couple who have taken out memberships in Tim’s porn store and have both taken to renting skin flicks in the wee hours of the morning. What complicates things here is that, not only have they been showing up separately, but Tim suspects Mike is stealing movies from his store.
As I’ve said before, I’ve walked the walk that playwright Massicotte has trod, and I’m here to tell you that Pervert is the real deal. Massicotte acknowledges that getting and being dirty is a basic human need. It’s what keeps the species going. In my experience, it was the same sad, lonely, disconnected people who kept coming back to the store day after day. It was then that I knew if strident feminists were really committed to eradicating pornography off the planet, then they would have to bite the bullet and start having a lot of sex with a lot of ugly men. I’ve always believed in “Put out or shut up”.
A lot of good is to said about Pervert and its cast. Jocelyn Alf’s Lisa comes into the store and expresses her consumerist desires in frank and graphic ways. This was done as it happened in my own experience. It may sound wild and adventurous. It is, but the whole transaction has to go down (heh-heh) as if she were ordering gum: Excitement astride the banality. But, without a doubt, the production’s truest note rang out loudest whenever James Hamilton’s Kurt wheezed into the store. He talks about porno like Martin Scorsese talks about cinema. Not a casual, passive viewer, but a connoisseur who can list sub-genres of genres. He IS the obsessive-completist I have met in real life! (Turns out Hamilton also spent time working in a porn shop. Perhaps we should stop sending budding playwrights to U of A and start sending them to work at Adult Superstore.) Hamilton plays Kurt with the humanity that most – not all – patrons of porn deserve, and he is almost worth the price of admission on his own.
The only real flaw worth mentioning in this production is Jason Chinn’s Portrayal of Tim. Chinn plays Tim with so many facile notes, I was left wondering if Chinn didn’t feel inconvenienced by being cast in the first place. I’m not saying he should be played like Brando, but a little more life, please. I’m not sure if this was an acting or directorial decision: All I know is that the result is off-putting, and so the thinking should be re-thought.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Pervert is how Massicotte resists wagging a finger of shame at the participants for their dirty desires. Shaming was what fucked us all up in the first place.
And if I may preach to the perverted: Pervert gets my approval for being the type of theatre you can watch with one hand free.
(Editor’s note: When he’s not writing theatre stories for GigCity with one hand, Adrian Lackey is a Sterling Award-winning playwright who has produced six plays in Edmonton, including Reefer Madness: The Musical, and Breathe. Uncle Smiley’s House of Dirty Love may see the light one day.)
