I didn’t find the play very funny. But gauging the response of the middle-aged women who were in attendance, they thought it was hilarious. They were cackling fiendishly at the “Loch Ness” monster and the “Eiffel Tower,” spilling cheap wine on cheaper pantsuits. I was gagging at the blown up images of the actor’s penis, and squirming in discomfort. The two “Australian” chaps who are the brains behind Puppetry of The Penis have stumbled upon something—women find penises hiliarious. Puppetry of the Penis is the brainchild of two Australian chaps named Simon Morley and David Friend. Morley and Friend are no longer the puppeteers in Toronto, so I have to wonder if they would have been better at pulling off jokes that seemed tired, lame and completely devoid of mirth. I left the play after about twenty-five minutes. My companion, a typical male like myself, was feeling similar pangs of nausea. We both fled the New Yorker for fresh air, while the crones behind us shrieked with glee at “the passing of the Olympic torch.”
We walked in silence for several blocks until we put enough distance between ourselves and the penises to gather our wits, whereupon we began dissecting the performance. Everything seemed staged and phony. The opening act, a stand up comedian, was the highlight of the evening, but after her twenty minute set there came a thirty minute lull before the puppeteers came on stage, no doubt a way for the New Yorker to sell its captive crowd more drinks.
Anyway, I’ve wasted enough time on this waste of a play. It was horrible, flaccid, limp, wilted, and disgusting. But, then again, the women in the theater seemed to be having a magnificent time.
Puppetry Of the Penis is playing at The New Yorker, Tuesday to Thursday at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9:30. There are rush student tickets available the day of the performance for $20.
