Review: Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

Well-crafted Play Fails to Convince
By Lauren Yarger
Christopher Durang’s Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them playing Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, is a clever play. It contains witty dialogue, zany characters and interesting structure. It just isn’t clever enough to find a way to convince us to enter a world where we can take lightly and laugh at torture, abuse of women and threats against our nation.

Following a night of drunkenness, Felicity (Laura Benanti) awakes in a hotel to find herself in bed with and married to a complete stranger named Zamir (Amir Arison). He isn’t forthcoming with much information about himself, but he tells her he makes a living in dangerous and illegal ways. Reverend Mike (John Pankow), who makes pornographic films on the side, married them, he tells her, and he has a certificate written on a menu from Hooters to prove it.

When Felicity, who suspects she might have been given a date-rape drug, suggests that they get an annulment, Zamir reacts angrily and threatens her with violence. He suggests instead, that she introduce him to her parents, whom Zamir expects to buy them a house and set him up in business. She agrees, and it’s right here, that resistance into Durang’s world which requires us to abandon reason and reality begins.

When she can get a word in edgewise during the unending talk of theater by her mother, Luella (played to the height of loony glory by Kristine Nielsen), Felicity confesses she thinks Zamir drugged her and that he might be a terrorist, despite his constant assurances that his name is Irish. When her father, Leonard (Richard Poe), is introduced to his new son-in-law, he pulls out a gun on Zamir who threatens to blow up the house by pushing a button on his cell phone. The situation is diffused by Luella’s suggestion that they have French toast instead. They agree and later, when Felicity takes Zamir back to her apartment despite his continued threats of phyical violence against her, she downs another drug-laced drink he prepares for her (is she really this stupid?) and Zamir gropes her as she falls unconscious.

Leonard, it turns out, isn’t the mild, meek butterfly collector he has shown his family. He’s really a spy in a shadow government of the United States and he enlists the help of operative Hildegarde (Audrie Neenan), who has more than a patriotic interest in working with Leonard and who for some reason keeps losing her underwear (they visually drop repeatedly) and walks around with them between her ankles throughout the show. Also assisting Leonard is Looney Tunes (David Aaron Baker), an agent with a form of Tourette’s Syndrome that causes him to impersonate cartoon characters.

When he isn’t slamming Jane Fonda for her pro-North Vietnam stand during the war, bashing gays and liberals, or demeaning his wife, Leonard is plotting for a way to get information that will allow him to use “enhanced” interrogation methods on Zamir. Felicity, for some unknown reason, finds she cares about Zamir and sides with him when she suspects her father might be hurting him. Meanwhile, Luella continues to escape in her chatter about the theater, and the sarcastic and witty slams about Broadway shows and playwrights, all expertly enhanced by Nielsen’s fluttering, twitching, and stupid-looking smile, give the play its funniest moments. The highlight is David Korins’ set which revolves to reveal unending locations

Hildegard overhears Zamir and Reverend Mike discussing plans to film a porno flick called “The Big Bang,” and she mistakes them and the orgasmic “explosions” they anticipate in numerous US cities for a terrorist attack. This is the justification Leonard needs to employ torture methods to extract details of the plan.

Suddenly the characters step out of the play and discuss their displeasure with how things are going. Most of the second act is a rewind of the previous scenes as the characters try to find a “nicer” conclusion that will eliminate the need for torture.

Nicholas Martin directs an able cast. Benanti is very talented at delivering long passages of dialogue at break-neck speed and Nielsen certainly deserves her Outer Critics Circle nomination for featured actress in a play. Durang gets a nod for craft, but requiring us to abandon all reality and decency robs the sarcasm of its humor. I got it. I just couldn’t join him in such an unrealistic and unpleasant world.

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them plays through May 10. For information, visit http://publictheater.org/

Christians might also like to know:

• Strong language
• Sexual activity
• God’s name taken in vain
• When Felicity tells her father Zamir has given her a date-rape drug, his first reaction is, “at least he has spunk.”
• A joke is made about pro-life Leonard being able to feel empathy for an unborn fetus, but not for a terrorist.

• A bizarre scene at Hooters includes props to enhance the busts of two of the actresses.
• Reverend Mike says he’s a “porn-again” Christian, that God created porn and that porn is OK because God created sex. “God watches it, why shouldn’t we?” he asks. He tells us he identified with the show The Vagina Monologues and that “different strokes for different folks” is one of the beatitudes. When asked how he could be a minister, Reverend Mike tells us he can because he’s a good person and counsels people and that Jesus wants us to forgive.