Slap&Tickle, a bathhouse gay play, is being mounted for a short run this summer in Provincetown, MA.
This pre-New York engagement will run Tuesdays thru Saturdays, July 6th thru August 14th at the Provincetown Theater.
Written by David Parr, this gay play is set in a contemporary gay bathhouse.
It uses a gallery of nearly 20 characters to explore – often in direct-address fashion to the audience — how drugs, politics, HIV and the Internet have changed the sexual and emotional landscape for gay men over the past 25 years in America.
This 90-minute bathhouse gay play has been produced in Chicago in 2003 and off-Broadway in 2008. David Drake will direct Provincetown Theater’s version.
Past reviews have been excellent. With the Cape Cod Times writing “Revealing, sympathetic and haunting…” While the Weekly Planet says “Theater doesn’t get much more candid than this” And finally Christopher Byrne of the Gay City News says “This is something to welcome”
Though Rick Reed of the Windy City Times writes
Slap and Tickle is supposed to be a comedy, but most of the jokes fell flat, as evidenced by the silence after some of the ‘jokes.’ Perhaps the show would have been funnier if it worked harder to unearth humor that was fresher and more original instead of relying on tired gayspeak such as calling each other by feminine names, having one character wear pearls, having another provide us with a lexicon of terms most gay men are more than familiar with (who needs a cock ring defined?). Although I saw the final preview before opening, it also seemed some of the actors had a long way to go before they had their lines down pat.
Parr needs to sharpen his focus, provide some dramatic tension, have the confidence to let his characters define themselves, and look for more originality before he has a play he can truly be ‘proud’ of.
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