MARILYN AND MARC
It makes me think they must offer classes in this: On the blackboard, the teacher writes, “My first wife was so immature. When I was taking a bath, she’d come in and sink all my boats.” “Go home and write 25 variations on that,” he tells the roomful of Wood-be’s. “Tomorrow I’ll show you how to turn them into a play.”
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If most of those class projects came out looking like Marilyn and Marc, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. You can really see a sense of professionalism in Steve Feffer’s script. He’s working with minimal dramatic resources–a nebbishy grad student and his girlfriend, a slender thread of plot, a few loopy, self-deprecatory monologues–but he keeps it all moving. There are lots of jokes, some of them not old enough to drink. There’s a twist or two. There’s even–except for a patch in the middle, when both characters stand around for what seems like an hour yelling “fuck you”–a sense of pace. It doesn’t wash, finally, but it isn’t going to send you out of the theater gnashing your teeth.
The battle shapes up. Marilyn offers “the erotic opportunities of a lifetime.” Before you know it, the deal is struck and they’re looking for a hooker for a threesome. And before you know it, she’s at his throat, tearing into him for his beastly desires, his total disregard for her, and the astonishing fact that he couldn’t see through the pack of lies she was feeding him all along.
