Catherine Léger’s Home Deliveries is about sex as possession, which is how she frames monogamy.
Based on the 1970s movie, Deux femmes en or, an erotic comedy, Home Deliveries follows Florence and Violet, heterosexually married women who live next to each other in an “ecologically sensitive” condo development. If that sounds like gentle mockery of orthodoxy, it is: that’s what Home Deliveries is all about.
When we meet them, both women feel sexually deadened, Florence by antidepressants, Violet by the hormonal impact of breastfeeding, so they kick those habits, rediscover their sex drives, and set out to explore “the infinite panoply of ravishments” the world offers — mostly in the form of delivery guys and unsuspecting Craigslist buyers. Violet’s husband Ben doesn’t notice because he’s busily cheating on her with a woman the program identifies as Miss YouTube (she’s on her phone a lot). And, when Florence goes off antidepressants, her husband David takes them up because he figures their relationship runs more smoothly when at least one of them is medicated.
There are some great laughs in this script and there’s plenty of equal-opportunity satire but, because there’s not a huge amount of thematic or narrative accumulation, the evening plateaued a bit for me.
The performances are all strong, mostly excellent. Playing Violet, Stefania Indelicato captures both the character’s desperate nuttiness — at first, she’s convinced her neighbours are deliberately cumming loudly so they can turn her into an aural voyeur — and, later, the directness of her lust. Indelicato brings an underlying innocence to all this, a sincerity and almost deadpan vulnerability, that makes her adventures very funny.
Aurora Chan is equally strong as Florence, combining comically flat vocal delivery and bursts of unleashed physicality as her character delivers some of the script’s most thematically challenging material. (See below.)
Daniel Martin fully inhabits David, Florence’s exasperated then stoned husband, but he stumbles performing two secondary characters, an exterminator and carpet cleaner. As performed by Mott, these guys are cartoons of working-class bozos, which puts them in a different stylistic world from everybody else in the production — and highlights an uncomfortable truth: a lot of erotic writing objectifies working-class characters. How can the idea that the economically less privileged are sexually available — and fair game — be anything but classist?
Dan Tait Brown is more consistently successful with his range of characters, which include Ben, Violet’s patriarchal and exasperatedly confused husband Ben.
Alina Quarin’s Miss YouTube cuts right though. Quarin hits the perfect note of amused sang froid as her character observes the others’ fumbling hypocrisies and goes straight for the pure, depersonalized turn-on: “I imagine you’re my torturer,” she tells the astonished Ben.
Predictably, the script challenges patriarchal norms: the husbands’ desperate desire to control their wives’ sexuality. More audaciously, it also challenges feminist orthodoxies. Wearing a low-cut top as she tries to seduce a politically earnest young guy, Florence defends the “right” of men to ogle her: “If you don’t have the right to look, it’s almost as if sex is wrong.” Miss YouTube also satirizes the performance of prevailing mores: she doesn’t care when a guy grabs her breast on the dance floor but, to please her friends, she pretends she does. “I know how to act like a good girl.” To be clear, I’m not endorsing disco boob grabbing; I’m celebrating the playwrights’ willingness to address the gap between individual experiences and societal expectations.
Under Diane Brown’s direction, the production elements are firing as successfully as the performances. With its sleek, gigantic bed, Heipo Leung’s set is as stylish as all get-out and it’s dynamically lit by Christian Ching. The sound design by Hannah DuMez is appealingly textured and witty.
So this production does a very solid job of realizing Cathérine Leger’s script, which has been translated by Leanna Brodie. My one disappointment, as I said off the top, is that there isn’t more accumulation. Once it has set its terms the play’s exploration of sexual adventure isn’t hugely surprising and its story isn’t particularly engaging. Like a lot of porn, Home Deliveries is episodic and somewhat repetitive, but it’s still basically a good time.
HOME DELIVERIES By Catherine Léger. Translated by Leanna Brodie. Directed by Diane Brown. A United Players of Vancouver production in association with Ruby Slippers Theatre. At the Jericho Arts Centre until April 13. (tickets and information)
PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of Daniel Martin and Aurora Chan by Nancy Caldwell)
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