Theatre in Review: Sell/Buy/Date (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage II)

	Sarah Jones. Photo: Joan Marcus

I didn't see Sarah Jones' debut piece, Bridge and Tunnel, in 2004, so for some of you I may be stating the obvious, but still it needs to be said: When it comes to the multiple-character solo show format, the lady simply has no peer. Her ability to slip into a variety of personae, ranging from an elderly New York matron to a black teenage prostitute, is beyond compare. Not only is each character sketch a thing of detailed beauty, you never catch the actress in transition; she simply becomes someone else, magically, seamlessly, and -- at least in Sell/Buy/Date -- hilariously.

That last word may seem surprising, since Sell/Buy/Date is largely about prostitution and sex trafficking. But where another writer might legitimately horrify us with case histories, Jones attacks the issue from another angle, going after feminist and libertarian defenses of sex-for-pay and spoofing the American knack for monetizing any form of experience, no matter how intimate. The action is set at least a century in the future, where Dr. Serene Campbell is conducting a college course on the history of 21st-century sexual attitudes. Her main resources are BERT -- "bio-empathic resonant technology" -- modules, which offer a virtual-reality version of oral histories, delivering authentic emotions along with recorded testimonies.

Jones is something of a BERT module herself, providing access to a gallery of engaging characters, each of whom displays her faultless ear for absurdity. There's Bella, a sex work studies major from San Francisco ("I was named for, like, Bella Abzug, who is, like, a famous feminist from, like, history"), who laments having grown up afraid of sex, having been dragged by her mother to "Womyn's Gaia Drum Circle retreats in Rhinebeck that were, like, 'No men!' And they all wore, like, Eileen Fisher caftans." In response, Bella hosts "a bi-weekly feminist pole-dancing party" called "Don't Get All Pole-mical," which is, she notes, "an amazing way to, like, get in touch with your, like, feminine power without essentializing what constitutes 'the feminine' and while increasing upper body strength and stamina." She adds, "Non-Jell-O shots are also available for vegans."

There's the Jamaican sex worker who, fed up with the pennies she made as a home health care aide, now marches for better working conditions, shouting, "No justice, no piece!" There's Cookie Chris, a pimp "turned motivational speaker, life coach, and therapist," who has developed his own form of cognitive behavioral therapy: "I mean, basically, it ain't like you lie to yo'self; you can't be, like, 'I'm an Olympic gymnast' if your ass is an accountant." There's Gary Weaselhead, "the Laughing Lakota from South Dakota," who crashes a porn industry awards ceremony to offer scathing commentary, before getting the hook: "It's funny, running the biggest sexual exploitation racket in history, that can't get you arrested, but trespassing here -- I get it, since it is your land, after all. The whole country -- we just love what you've done with the place."

Each character adds to a portrait of an American future in which "the total mainstreaming of commercial sex" produces a series of bizarre developments, including "big-box brothels" with names like MyGirl and WildMart, and a "full-service sexual entertainment complex" in New Orleans named Les Grands Pitons. Constance, a trainee at Les Grands Pitons, gives us a tour, noting the excellent health benefits and new assisted-living complex for elderly clients. Constance complains about "anti-sex people" who note the human toll of pay-for-play careers, adding, with her own special logic, "Why don't you just say we need to get rid of fire departments then, 'cause that's not for everybody, they have to go fight a fire, get hurt in the line of duty." In fact, the whole industry comes crashing down when the availability of fantasy sex becomes so prevalent that it results in the "male health crisis," represented by widespread performance problems among men and ultimately leading to the radically different society in which Serene delivers her cautionary lectures.

Acutely aware that an anti-prostitution polemic might be dismissed as being too preachy or priggish, Jones makes excellent use of her remarkable satirical sense, letting her characters have their say until their arguments collapse under the weight of their internal contradictions. She also works her looking-backward format for all it's worth. One of the biggest laughs at the performance I attended came from Serene's assertion that "toward the end of the 2010s, while a small fraction of the population enjoyed unprecedented wealth, the average person struggled to find work that paid a living wage. Even for elite young people, it was a privilege in certain cases to work for nothing -- by the way, this was not slavery; that was a different period. This was called 'internship.'"

Indeed, Jones has so much fun demolishing any possible argument in defense of prostitution that one especially regrets Sell/Buy/Date's one major weakness, a plot thread involving a form of identity theft that potentially threatens Serene's academic career. Without it, the play is essentially a string of monologues, but this little bit of narrative is so underdeveloped that it mostly serves as a distraction; it's also hard to believe that the supremely competent Serene would be involved in something so shady and, ultimately, pointless. The only real benefit of this subplot is that it cues the eleventh-hour introduction of Serene's mother, who has a surprising and touching story of her own to tell; if Sell/Buy/Date is going to have an extended life, however, Jones might want to take another look at the piece's structure.

Under Carolyn Cantor's light-handed direction, however, Jones deftly walks a tightrope, hitting her comic targets with unfailing accuracy and never slipping into exploitation. (Her empathy is palpable, even for the nuttiest and most benighted of her characters.) The production also benefits from a sleek design. Dane Laffrey's set features lighting units built into the deck and upstage wall, allowing for the creation of a variety of attractive abstract looks. Eric Southern's lighting aids in creating a different look with which to frame each new monologue. Bray Poor's sound design creates a number of futuristic beeps and buzzes that add immensely to the next-century atmosphere.

Jones also plays a number of men, including Joey, a middle-aged cop who, commenting on the male health crisis, says, "It hurts, deep down, buying a fake experience." There's nothing fake about Jones, however -- her theatrical sense is honed to a diamond sharpness. In every way, Sell/Buy/Date is the real thing. You won't need a BERT module to be amused -- or moved. -- David Barbour