THE MEN’S ROOM
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Nevius sets a supposedly realistic play in the men’s room of a bus station where, except for one token real patron, no one enters but the six characters–five men and a woman. This crummy john has become the haven for a “congregation” led by “Father” Dominic, a 26-yearold ex-seminarian who wears a dippy hat and offers his young disciples absolution from inside his favorite stall (his “magical place”). There his acolytes confess to a stupefying litany of flaky adolescent hang-ups–mainly parent, school, and relationship problems, all of which sound like The Breakfast Club dumbed down to zero. And Dominic says mass, feeding the congregation white bread and reading from the sports pages. He boasts that his john provides two kinds of relief. (Really, though, it’s three; later he barfs–that’s character development.)
The denizens of his lavatory/ church are–stop me if you’ve heard this before–an insecure graffiti artist who gets no encouragement from his cold father, a rich Pollyanna airhead who’s afraid to commit to a relationship (she’s Dominic’s ex-girlfriend but yes, secretly she still loves him), a janitor working to earn enough money for a sex change (he’s also, for good measure, a failed abortion who never knew his parents), and a high school kid running away both from the algebra class where he’s regularly humiliated and from an uncaring, materialistic father who puts him under too much pressure. (What–no computer nerd with cancer?)
Naah.
