ORGASMO ADULTO ESCAPES FROM THE ZOO
Despite the energy and ingenuity Peditto has brought to the staging, Orgasmo still seems hopelessly out-of-date. Men are accused of being selfish beasts insensitive to the needs of women, and the women are portrayed as hapless victims of this oppression. Sex is violence, marriage is slavery, love is a four-letter word.
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Mary-Beth Kelleher anchors the show as “A Woman Alone,” the longest and most complex monologue. Dressed in puppy-dog slippers and a housecoat, she stands at her ironing board, shouting at a neighbor woman sitting in a nearby window. As she shouts, she reveals the hopelessness of her situation–she is locked in the apartment with her brother-in-law who, though totally encased in a plaster cast, still manages to grab her with his free hand. Her husband is a terrible lover who demands sex at his convenience. “Always ready, I have to be like Nescafe,” she says. She recently ended an affair with her young French tutor because her husband caught them flagrante delicto, which is why he now locks her up when he’s away at work. While languishing in the apartment, which is filled with all the latest appliances, she fields obscene phone calls and yells at the Peeping Tom across the courtyard who keeps his binoculars trained on her window all day. The scene ends with an orgy of feminist rage that is as preposterous as it is predictable.
