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Is There Sex After Marriage?

Review by Pauline Adamek

Playwright-director Jeff Gould has found a formula that works. Several years ago he had a huge hit with his play It’s Just Sex!, which played off-Broadway and all over the world and enjoyed a two-year run at Studio City’s tiny Two Roads Theatre. Gould has returned to the 56-seat house with a world premiere comedy that is an offshoot of his former hit. In Is There Sex After Marriage?, he once again charts the marital woes of three couples, examining their interpersonal dynamics with a sparkling sense of humor. 

Each couple presents a marital snapshot. Sherry and Roger (Rene Ashton and Jaret Sacrey) are languishing in the doldrums, so they frequently socialize with two other couples. While neighbors Mindy and Joe (Natalie Salins and Brad Lee Wind) can’t help making passive-aggressive comments and taking pot-shots at each other, Beth and Zack (Anne Leighton and Joel Berti) can’t keep their hands off each other, even after eight years of marriage. That gets the others wondering: What’s their secret? How are they keeping the romance alive?

All is revealed when Sherry and Roger inadvertently wander into a swingers’ party. An attempt to spice up their marriage inevitably blows up in their faces, leading to a shift from light comedy into a serious discussion that borders on a group therapy confessional.

With his fanciful examination of marriage, fidelity, lust and trust, Gould gives voice to all facets of a troubled marriage, often dividing the discussion along clichéd gender lines. In Gould’s world, women hold all the power, getting to decide when sex is going to happen or when a discussion is over. For the most part, Gould keeps it light and, at a mere 75 minutes, the play zips along until its satisfying denouement. There are awkward scenes that could have you cringing and laughing at the same time. The cast gives great performances, especially Joel Berti, who uses his charm and sexy smirk to good effect in two roles. –Pauline Adamek

Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City; Fri. & Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., . p.m.; through May 4. (323) 960-5770, www.Plays411.com/sexaftermarriage

A lot of sensational sex scandals have passed under the bridge in the 17 years since How I Learned to Drive first shocked audiences with its nuanced and almost sympathetically inverted portrayal of child sexual molestation. Which is to say that in a world where news of yet another disgraced pedophile priest is barely worthy of a raised eyebrow, the seat-squirming factor in Paula Vogel’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner isn’t what it once was.

Happily, director Carly Weckstein’s accomplished studio revival of the play (abetted by William Herder’s nicely emblematic scenic design) does come as a potent reminder of just what delectable and powerfully drawn roles the script offers for a committed ensemble.

The play, which charts the seven-year incestuous relationship between the middle-aged uncle Peck (Thaddeus Shafer) and his vulnerable but not-so-unwilling, adolescent-through-teenaged niece Li’l Bit (Elitia Daniels) in rural Maryland during the 1960s, gains its power from Vogel’s use of reverse chronology in order to first establish Peck’s disarming Southern charm and genuine sympathy and affection for the object of his less-than-avuncular doting.

As the narrative moves backwards in time and the true implications of the play’s titular “driving lessons” become ever more explicit, Li’l Bit is revealed as increasingly and more openly complicit. Vogel’s coup is to upend audience assumptions about who, exactly, was in the driver’s seat all along. All relationships the play declares — even of the victimizer-victim kind — are composed of endlessly tangling and all-too-human shades of gray.

To that end, Weckstein’s staging is firmly founded on the remarkable talents of Shafer, whose knife-edged portrayal of Peck strikes a profoundly unsettling balance between sympathetic compassion and the hint of something “off” just beneath the surface. The fine Anna Walters stands out in multiple roles, particularly in her persuasive turn as Peck’s sinisterly enabling wife.

Backed by capable support from Jonny Taylor and Cassandra Gonzales, who with Walters comprise the Greek Chorus, the production, together with Weckstein’s impressive revival of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine last year, is quickly establishing Illyrian Players as one of L.A.’s top interpreters of contemporary classics. —Bill Raden.

Theatre Aslyum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sun., 8 p.m.; through April 13. https://Illyrianplayers.com