THEATRE REVIEW: PIG

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
22 SEPT 2013
R: 4/5

With the runaway success of E.L. James' 50 Shades of Grey, sexual adventurers may be tempted to check out British playwright Tim Luscombe's PIG, which premiered on the Buddies In Bad Times' mainstage Thursday, launching the company's 35th season. But despite the fact that both the novels and the play explore some of the same themes — the erotic world of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sado/masochism — the two have about as much in common as bike riding and bull riding. In PIG, the very heterosexual 50 Shades of Grey is transformed into a queer 500 shades of black and blue with, at least for the more imaginative in the audience, a bit of blood and other best un-named bodily fluids thrown in for good measure.

Under the tight and often fearless direction of Brendan Healy, who also serves as artistic director at Buddies, PIG tells parallel stories of two same-sex couples, both of whom have hooked up on line. There are certainly similarities between them, not the least of which is the fact that they both have a strong interest in the world of BDSM. In both cases there is also the same age difference, with the elders, Knife and Stevie (both played by Blair Williams) taking the dominant roles and Pig and Joe (both played by Paul Dunn) taking the submissive.

Interweaving their stories with such complete and expert intimacy that it is often (intentionally, one suspects) all but impossible to separate them, Luscombe creates a story that is both a twisted celebration of alternate sexuality and a warning, as his foursome spirals out of control in their descent into shared obsession.

And finally, control is what PIG is all about, for all that it aspires to be a story about love, obsession and "the quest for deeper levels of intimacy," as the press notes suggest. In the face of this, Healy's direction is immaculate, often beautifully constrained, in a production where both violence and nudity are refreshingly underplayed, considering the storyline. Still, despite all of the playwright's considerable skills, not to mention the utter fearlessness of the three-member cast (Bruce Dow joins a sometimes over-whelmed Dunn and Williams in a number of memorable, often incredibly creepy roles) PIG still feels too much like voyeurism — or worse.

For ultimately, one must recognize that, despite PIG's queer pretensions, with  a bit of gender-shifting, it would be just another horrific and banal tale of spousal abuse, a same-sex coda to Life With Billy or The Burning Bed. What's more, in a story marked with a longing for the good old days when gay men were sexual and social outlaws, we come face to face once again with a community of characters apparently not only filled with the same self-loathing that marked the era, but still paralyzed by it as well. It's brave stuff, to be sure, and skillfully done on every level, but in the end, apparently that's just not enough to turn this PIG's ear into a silk purse.