Theater Review - MOMI Dearest

Is there any worse possible title for a play than Aaron Brown’s The M.O. of M.I. (the Modus Operandi of Male Intimacy)? Sure, All’s Well That Ends Well gives away the ending, and New York’s current hit Urinetown certainly doesn’t sound promising. But Brown’s title, with its whimsical capitalization, fairly reeks of pretentiousness.

The play itself isn’t as self-consciously artsy as the moniker suggests, and could be described as a suspense show about the dangers of inviting a performance artist into your home. Neither the script nor the production at Red Chair Theater has much polish, but the fast-paced plot provides some surprises.

We meet Michael (Larry Davis), a financier in his mid-30s, and Tom (Ricky Marson), his significantly younger lover, on the eve of their eight-month anniversary. They appear to have a happy relationship despite Michael’s tendency to fuss over matters like Tom folding his underwear improperly. But things begin to sour the night they see an itinerant performance artist (Adam Fitzgerald), and Michael lets him crash at the house over Tom’s objections.

At one point, Tom says words to the effect that those who can, do, and those who can’t, become performance artists. Throughout the play, the action cuts to Jonathon in performance, reacting to his own recorded voice and ranting about prayer and police officers. It’s difficult to take the spoken-word scenes seriously, and the muddiness of the playhouse’s audio doesn’t help. In the second act, we see Michael giving a dry presentation at a business meeting, and it’s a shame the play doesn’t set up more of a contrast with Jonathon’s would-be poetic soliloquies.

Jonathon doesn’t disguise his physical interest in Michael, and Fitzgerald gives the artist amusingly overt, come-hither body language. Michael wears a wedding ring and is committed to Tom, but can’t deny his attraction to his guest. And when Jonathon’s stay extends from one night to several weeks, tensions between Michael and Tom build to a breaking point.

Directed by Laurence Ruth, The M.O. of M.I. makes a few points about intimate relationships, exploring the perils of temptation and the dynamics of arguments.

The playwright has a tendency to lay out too much exposition in his dialogue: “We had a good dinner tonight, a fantastic movie, but you haven’t said more than five words to me all evening.” Lines like “You sound like a bad movie” only draw the wrong kind of attention. Brown also knows Chekhov’s observation that “If there is a pistol on the wall in the first act, it will be fired by the third act.” Here the conspicuous weapon is a huge butcher knife, but the climactic act of violence proves inadvertently humorous instead of horrifying.

Including an intermission, The M.O. of M.I. propels along at less than an hour-and-a-half. At the end of the first act the plot takes an interesting turn, setting up some cat-and-mouse games and unexpected reversals in the second half. The actors aren’t really subtle enough to give much depth to the characters’ darker desires, with Marson revealing little but Tom’s petulance, and Fitzgerald mostly conveying the artist’s self-regard. Davis gives more nuanced work, reminiscent of a young Roddy McDowell, but tends to turn shrill when the play heats up.

The M.O. of M.I. is one of the first theatrical productions from Red Chair Theater, home of the improv troupe Comedy Response Unit, and its selection shows that the playhouse has aspirations beyond just fun and games. (It also should be acknowledged that there’s an audience for plays about guys kissing in their Calvin Kleins, and The M.O. of M.I. gives that audience its money’s worth.) But even given the limitations of the production, the script comes across as one of those sow’s ears that’s never going to be a silk purse.

The M.O. of M.I. plays through March 18 at the Red Chair Theater, 662 11th St., at 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. $15-17. 404-872-4242.??