Beyond Therapy -- Outrageous Fun.

By Bob and Karen Isaacs

BOB:  Karen tells me that I have seen this play in a very early incarnation at the Yale Rep in New Haven in the '80s, I don't remember it all. What I am talking about is Christopher Durang's comedy Beyond Therapy

KAREN: which is now at the Westport Country Playhouse

BOB: it is a terrifically funny play
 
KAREN: it is wild and wooly
 
BOB:  typical Chris Durang

KAREN: and perhaps, if you are a psychiatrist you might not want to see this -- they are not shown at their best.
 
BOB: David Kennedy does a very good job directing this and he gets the actors to characterize their parts perfectly. The way the notes describe it, "After a disastrous first date, Bruce and Prudence seek solace in therapy -- despite both their therapists being stark, raving mad. And that's only the beginning of their problems. Durang's topsy-turvy world is a potent cocktail of sexual mix-ups, relationship neuroses, and serious lack of impulse control. The play contains adult content and language."
 
KAREN:  This is not realism -- it is outrageous comedy.

BOB: It is Chris Durang.

KAREN:  The couple meets on this blind date at a restaurant with no waiters,  they each have their issues including the fact that he has a male lover. They then retreat to their therapists.  Her therapist is a super macho man who keeps hitting on her, and the man goes to this motherly woman  who is totally nuts.

BOB:  She is my favorite character. Kathleen McNenny plays her.

KAREN: This is a woman who forgets words, forgets which patient she is seeing, offers totally inappropriate suggestions,

BOB: but she is a sweetheart.  And she has these wonderful eyes that she blinks at the patients with, and how could not love her.

KAREN: And there is the waiter-less restaurant. This is wild and wooly -- you HAVE to suspend disbelief.

BOB: There is a lot of funny stuff

KAREN: You have to be in the right frame of mind of this. It is a little like a "Saturday Night Life" sketch at times. Chris Durang is a brilliant comedic playwright.

BOB: He started as an undergraduate at Yale.

KAREN: This is an early work. It's a good production.

BOB: You will enjoy it. Beyond Therapy is at the Westport Playhouse through May 14.

This review ran on WNHU-FM 88.7 and www.wnhu.net.