The battle of the sexes finally gets some live ammo

JULIA TIERNAN/YH During a botched burglary in 'Criminal Hearts,' Amanda Clark (left), SY '01, invites Amber Gross, BK '00, to be a Pepper, too. Or else.

Criminal Hearts examines the difference between the minds of a hardened criminal and an innocent victim...(drum roll)...if there is any. Bo (Amanda Clark, SY '01) blunders a burglary attempt and ends up as a hostage of her rich white victim Ata (Amber Gross,
BK '00). This role reversal, one that continues throughout the play until the burglar winds up in a dress drinking champagne, is slightly less subtle than it ought to be.

After the burglar, a self-professed liar, begins to lecture Ata on the universal importance of respect, it's hardly surprising that Ata counters with a diatribe on the cyclical nature of violence. With no shortage of clichés in their interchanges ("Don't trust nobody!" "It's wrong to steal!" "Minimum wage is like fucking your sister!"), it's nearly impossible to separate the trite from the true.

The pair is soon joined by a third partner-in-crime, Renne (Julia Dahl, SY '99), and before long they are hatching a plot to rob Ata's rich white husband Wib (Ross Wachsman, ES '02). Wib is an everyman: wifebeater, adulterer and lawyer. Don't worry about men getting a bad rap, though; there's also a crackhead for counterpoint. And plenty of pencil-sharpening and ripping the heads off golf clubs. This kind of head-clubbing symbolism appears several times in the script.

The contrast between characters is played up and down until we forget who was who and why. This is a good tactic for illustrating the basic sameness of humans from all walks of life. It gets tired, however, when the clinically-depressed housewife and the streetwise housebreaker hold 20-minute long empathy sessions and then wear each other's jewelry. The juxtaposition is supposed to be a stretch--that's part of the joke--but when the point is made the fourth time, it certainly doesn't need to be made the 14th.

Another script problem is the unnecessary overuse of profanity. Though a couple of "fucks," a few "shits," and a "goddamn" never hurt anybody, there comes a point when the ear rejects phrases like "just un-fucking-tie me" and "this goddamn Dr. Pepper." Bo sprinkles the f-word almost randomly throughout her speech, and the use of cursing to characterize her as "from the lower class" is explicitly cited by Ata, who notes "swearing is the last resort of a person with a limited vocabulary."

On the bright side, there are excellent performances throughout the production. Both Clark and Gross deliver impressive fast-paced soliloquies about the woes of being a rich lunatic/poor hustler. Wachsman is a convincing sleazeball husband caricature, and Dahl is a great flip sidekick. The characters play off each other quite well in parts, and the final scene brings all four on stage for an entertaining vignette of confrontations. More things are broken, thrown, or licked than you can count.

The play might benefit from a better location. The Davenport common room is not exactly conducive to elaborate set design, and loud, drunken college kids pass by the open windows every few minutes. The set itself is not much more than a mattress, a tall stack of pizza boxes and Dr. Pepper cases, and a floor strewn with crushed cans and sharpened pencils. We never truly find out what all this stuff is supposed to be, other than the trappings of a loony, lonely divorcee. But there are lots of beverages around, and it's not just Dr. Pepper they're drinking. Some more color and props would liven things up a bit.

At any rate, a show that takes so many brave comedic risks can't be faulted for missing a beat or two. Sometimes comedy can be harder to get right than drama. Just look at the past five years in television, or movies, or the Harvard Lampoon.

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