We have a civilized agreement, and a reasonable one, that says we can’t behave
the way some of our animal cousins do. I think this idea – that everything men
instinctively want, on a primitive level, is basically bad and everything women
want, basically good – is how we’ve constructed morality, based on gender. We
see women as a civilizing force – the things they want lead to social stability and
the things men want lead to chaos and destruction. I don’t know if that’s true or
false, but it’s present in how we currently talk about gender. – Bruce Norris
Steppenwolf Theatre presents DOMESTICATED.
Why do men think with their d#cks? Women have pondered this question for centuries. In his edgy dissection of a political sex scandal, Playwright and Director Bruce Norris theorizes ‘thinking’ has nothing to do with it. Norris builds a case for human non-monogamy. The broader framework of DOMESTICATED compares male and female species in nature. Throughout the show, Emily Chang (Cassidy) pops up to continue narrating her classroom presentation. Norris cleverly nestles his story of a man’s fall-from-grace within Chang’s school project.
From the start, we know Tom Irwin (Bill) has been naughty. The women in his life are vocal about the error of his ways; his wife (played by Mary Beth Fisher), his daughter (played by Melanie Neilan) and his lawyer (played by Beth Lacke). Through their rants, we piece together the origin of discovery. Each of the women bring humor and gut-punching realism in expressing their disdain and disappointment to Irwin. Fisher, in particular, is marvelous in her emotionally controlled tirades. Act one is a provocative series of building implosions. As part of her legal defense for Irwin, Lacke continues to reveal the gravity of the situation. What begins as a very ugly snag in a sweater eventually gets unraveled into a smelly, messy pile of yarn that a cat won’t even go near.
Norris navigates the gender exploration with raw honesty. His superb ensemble grapple with love and lust and getting fecal matter underneath a fingernail. The first act is an assault on Irwin. He gets verbally smacked and kicked in the balls. And it’s not just from his personal female relationships. Mildred Marie Langford, channeling her inner Oprah, uses her television show to convince her audience of Irwin’s guilt. She coerces them with the slick upbeat appeal of media. I found myself empathetic to Irwin in the first act. He silently endures the private berating and public beating.
In the second act, as Irwin finds his voice, I lose some of my empathy. Irwin drunkenly pontificates to an uninterested Rae Gray (bartender). We finally hear his side, his backstory. He rationalizes men’s sexual urges. And he does it arrogantly by speaking as an authority on how women feel. The only other male in the play, Esteban Andres Cruz, calls him on it. Cruz is dressed in drag. He and Irwin argue about which of them understand women better. Their absurd yet profound altercation is another illustration of Norris showing how men’s pursuits lead to chaos and destruction.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed DOMESTICATED, I thought it could have been tighter. How many times must Irwin tell us that the worst thing that could happen is losing his vision in one eye? Once! Or even twice makes the point. For an otherwise smart script, Norris belabors the eye injury as well as some other points. Those repetitive issues aside, Bruce Norris is still a sharp, contemporary playwright that stirs up evocative conversation around social mores. Instead of ‘pushing the button’, Norris takes a huge mallet and destroys the control panel. He evokes discussions that don’t rely on prefabricated convention. In DOMESTICATED, he jolts the audience into releasing their untamed thoughts into the wild. Be warned: it might be an uncomfortable car ride home for married couples.
Running Time: Two hours and fifteen minutes with one intermission
At Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted
Written and Directed by Bruce Norris
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 7:30pm
Additional performances at 7:30pm on January 3rd and 10th
Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm
At 2pm on January 20th, 27th and February 3rd
Thru February 7th
Buy Tickets at www.steppenwolf.org
Production photo by Michael Brosilow
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