Cock Tale: Shame on Me!

Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Santa Monica Playhouse
Through September 11

In her solo show, writer/performer Debra Ehrhardt describes her love life. Well, maybe that’s not precisely accurate: Ehrhardt’s show focuses less on romance and more on that aspect of love that is centered around a man’s groin — the so-called “one-eyed snake,” as she puts it. 

You may know the object she’s talking about by other names — the spitting cobra, the hose that spurts cream, the generic schlong, the turkey neck, the chicken choker — but to Ms. Ehrhardt. that comparatively modest bit of expanding gristle is the devil that causes trouble for men and women when it wakes up and says hello.

As a child in Jamaica, Ehrhardt is lured up a mango tree by a young relative who bribes her into touching his little thing (not a mango by the way). The voice of God assures Ehrhardt she’s going to burn in Hell for eternity for doing so, too. A few years later, though, she’s up that same mango tree again, and this time she accidentally watches her beloved grandfather having an illicit liaison with a neighbor. As the years pass, Ehrhardt endures a brief unsatisfying marriage to a religious man with serious guilt issues involving his priapus.

In Joel Zwick’s crisp, intimate production, Ehrhardt emerges as a genial upbeat figure whose performance one might enjoy in almost any strong drama or light comedy. But this collection of routine sexual anecdotes is fairly inconsequential, limited both in range and in its ability to cast any color on her personality, as most of her adventures are observational in nature. 

Sex tales are like the cotton candy of theater: delightful for a short time, but not something to build an entire diet around. And Ehrhardt’s series of stories gradually becomes repetitive, burdened by increasingly prosaic meditations on guilt and emotional maturity. There are some commendable attempts to define men’s sexual needs from the female point of view which are amusingly trenchant — and which Ehrhardt hilariously renders in her beautifully sardonic, Jamaican-patois-inflected line readings. 

But the material itself is a little less than meets the eye. The show is probably most engaging when viewed as a calling card to explore Ehrhardt’s performance skills for future shows; it must be confessed, however, that unless you know her personally, you’ll probably be hard pressed to feel connected to her stories or her performance.  

Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4^th Street, Santa Monica; Sat. 4 p.m., Sun. 6 p.m.; through September 11.  (800) 838-3006 or https://www.santamonicaplayhouse.com/cock-tales.html. Running time:  80 minutes with no intermission.