Well, you can start to imagine how it feels in that cutthroat shark womb at Studio Theatre's new offering, Pas de Deux (the ballet term for duet). Because while we go in expecting two one-act plays on the combativeness of love, in the end, one play completely devours its feeble companion.
Under the fast-paced direction of Eric Ruffin, the clear victor is Daniel MacIvor’s 2-2 Tango, an ebullient and witty dance piece about the fears and delights of hooking up, played out between Alex Mills and Jon Hudson Odom, both of whom perform like they were cloned Jurassic Park style out of the amber-locked DNA of Mikhail Barishnikov, Fred Astaire, Gregory Hines and James Bond.
Jim and James emerge in identical tuxes bearing identical beaming grins. With grace and fluidity in every expression, they proceed to savage what we all know as the 21st century mating process, laying it out in all its self-sabotaging, neurotic glory.
It's the kind of dance piece I suspect people who claim to "hate musical theater" might love.
Unfortunately, you can't get to Tango which occurs after the intermission, until you've sat through its far weaker sibling, Skin Tight by New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson.
Skin Tight draws its title from a line about “sliding the blade through the tight skin” of an apple — a chops-licking image straight out of Eden, if ever there was one.
Things begin promisingly enough, with a loud, Keith Moon-esque drum solo smash of man and woman. Tom and Elizabeth fight with their entire bodies, swinging, rolling around, spanking, slopping on each others’ faces. It’s visceral and, well, kinda hot.
So kudos to the fight choreography — acrobatic, aerobic — which is unquestionably gorgeous. (So, incidentally, is the lighting design by Jedidiah Roe.)
After tussling for a bit, Tom and Elizabeth take a breather, both gulping from buckets of water, panting. Then back they go. It is the mystery around these two smooching gladiators that heightens the excitement for what's to come as we watch.
But then the dialogue begins, and it all goes downhill (so to speak, as the set piece is a green hill!) from there.
As they talk about their many years together, a lot of it revolving around sex — “I was worried it wouldn’t fit, until I saw it,” she says of their first time, something every man wants to hear— the lack of specificity and cohesion to the story begins to try our patience.
Which has nothing to do with the capable (and brave) actors behind Tom and Elizabeth, Jens Rasmussen and Emily Townley, whose project a bone-deep familiarity and intimacy with one another most affectingly through movement, as when she shaves him or he washes her hair.
While their closeness is evident physically, the dialogue holds us at arms length, down one well-trod path after another. There are infidelities. There’s a far-off war. There’s an estranged child. There are old-timey folk songs.
Oh, and there are endless agrarian metaphors. Like how farmland is a place where “man could set his ghosts free” or how as you age, “your rivers get parched.” By the time the end finally arrives, you’ve been anticipating it for awhile.
Although there are fewer words spoken in Tango, and the content is markedly lighter, somehow Jim and James' story resonates truer.
There’s the “Indepen-dance,” an ode to maintaining singlehood. There’s the moment Jim and James meet, and how their sentences overlap like music. How, while doing the Hustle, the introductions turn awkward (“My father was a monster,” Jim blurts).
In the style of “Singing in the Rain’s” or “Moses Supposes,” many of the pieces are purely there to have fun with language. There’s the orgasmic “oh” that punctuates the word tango, or the cheerleader-style spelling of “very attractive.”
“I prefer not to see me being seen,” James says, setting up the night’s best gag—a consummation scene with clap on/clap off lights. (As my friend pointed out, how could the makers of that invention have known of its destiny, here in 2013, used so brilliantly?)
Jim and James’ skepticism and anxiety around not just finding a partner, but about whether love ever works, or even exists, gives grounding to the nonstop comical bombast, in a way that sneaks up on you.
This is seen best in a series of 10 “frightening possibilities” scenarios, which have Jim and James acting out everything from passive-aggressive shouting fests to going through sickeningly cute cat names.
By Alexis Victoria Hauk for the DCist
