Written by Miranda Rose Hall; directed by Margot Bordelon
Performances through November 18, 2018
Claire Tow Theater, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY
lct.org
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| Jax Jackson and Marianne Rendón in Plot Points in Our Sexual Development (photo: Jeremy Daniel) |
In Miranda Rose Hall’s mainly searing, occasionally syrupy hour-long two-hander, a couple speaks openly and explicitly about the difficult roads each travelled to arrive at where they are now: reluctantly but hopefully embarking on a new relationship. The title, Plot Points in Our Sexual Development, is anything but subtle: it literally describes what the couple does throughout Hall’s rather contrived but effective construction.
Cecily, a 30-something cis woman, and Theo, a 30-something genderqueer and transmasculine, at first alternate sharing their most enduring—and sometimes humiliating—memories of sexual initiation, gender confusion and other intimate experiences as they approach this current moment: tentatively (while more than a little scared), they decide to cement their growing relationship; even though it’s not guaranteed to work—physically or emotionally—it may turn out to be the necessary salve for their past wounds.
Hall’s dialogue is literate and biting, even if it sometimes approaches harangues for its own sake. But Margot Bordelon has directed simply and sympathetically on Andrew Boyce’s near-bare set, which visualizes the bare souls inhabiting it. And those souls are gracefully inhabited by Jax Jackson (Theo) and Marianne Rendón (Cecily), tremendously affecting and vital, whether speaking or listening to the other, pulling away or drawing closer—in short, running the gamut of emotions their characters go through.
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