Love me 10 times baby, 10 times today

From London's West End to Nicole Kidman's rear end, The Blue Room has earned its reputation as "pure theatrical Viagra."

TANYA PALOMO/YH

Minus Kidman's prestigious naked butt, David Hare's Broadway "play in 10 intimate acts" has now come to the Whitney Humanities Center, and guess what? It still works. Maybe that's because the actors are so exposed—and I'm not just referring to David Blasher, DC '01, and Lisa Limor Rabie, BK '01. The characters are also acting here: they constantly swap roles and sexual partners, but their casual promiscuity remains transparent. The audience is able to glimpse the tragedy behind posturers like the Cab Driver, the Au Pair, the Politician, the Married Woman, the Playwright, and the Model; before us, these people expose themselves as lonely, exploitative, and cruel, yet oddly romantic.

In 10 desperate couplings of passion, actors Blasher and Rabie deftly adorn and strip themselves and the five different characters that each one embodies. It's essentially the plot of Arthur Schnitzler's 1900 play Reigen, better known as La Ronde, which was later adapted by Hare in 1998 and set in modern Britain. Although it loses some plausibility due to recent developments like HIV, the scenario remains the same: A sleeps with B, B sleeps with C, C sleeps with D, and so on, until eventually we find ourselves back with A. According to this production, a senior theater studies project for Blasher, Rabie, and director George Cederquist, SM '01, and a film studies project for designer Abby Ranger, TC '01, the erotic encounters occur "in one of the great cities of the world, in the present day."

TANYA PALOMO/YH

It could be anywhere, or anyone, really—and while the characters may share a single desire for a certain interval of time (the exact duration of their intercourse is always projected during blackouts on an overhead screen), it always ends badly, and they part their separate ways. Scene after scene, the mating dance creates and crumbles human connections, yet preserves the hope that maybe next time things will turn out better.

In the meantime, Blasher and Rabie are a hypnotic couple—they ease quickly into each new flirtatious role and are obviously quite at ease with one another. During the course of the evening Blasher cartwheels naked and Rabie's body stocking drops to the floor, but, for once, onstage nudity does not seem gratuitous. Bared skin increases in gradual increments as the scenes progress, diminishing shock value and realistically portraying intimacy.

TANYA PALOMO/YH All this action is giving me a blue-roomer.

In the pre-coital moments, this intimacy is embodied in the insinuative glances of the actors or the light of a burning candle. The eye contact between Blasher and Rabie belies their seductiveness, and while their various characters are somewhat stereotyped, they are generally convincing. Rabie first introduces herself as the Girl, a prostitute who must summon all her courage to approach a man. Later, she completely transforms into the Married Woman, who cheats on her husband with a young boy. Blasher also manages difficult transitions, and he is especially amusing as the pretentious Playwright. With a knee-buckling, Urkel-esque swagger and a silly mock turtleneck, he plays whimsically off Rabie, this time the young, coke-snorting Model. Evidently, she has never heard of this writer or his "post-romantic" works. As in every scene, the overhead film, mostly in slides, serves to add its own bit of obstruse atmosphere to the setting. In this particular episode, the stage-lighting lulls with warm reds, the candle burns, and the Playwright picks up his guitar.

Theater

Blue Room By David Hare Directed by George Cederquist Fri. and Sat., Dec. 8 and 9 at 7 and 10 p.m. Whitney Humanities Center

His song is called "The Blue Room," and the Model is enraptured. "Are people truly what they seem?" Rabie bobs her head with a blank, drugged smile. He continues on, "The dream was just a dream—it wasn't you." Inevitably, this is the realization that the characters awake to, and the memory they must take away from their sexual encounters. It forms a lasting impression that speaks to why this play has been successful in so many stagings. In the end, the haunting question remains: have we learned anything or are we left right where we began? This creeping doubt is what gives The Blue Room its color.

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