Theatre in Review: Reading Under the Influence (DR2 Theatre) In Reading Under the Influence, the playwright Tony Glazer spoofs the "Real Housewives" franchise that has seemingly taken over the Bravo cable network. If this isn't the definition of shooting fish in a barrel, I don't know what is - which makes it all the more amazing that this tone-deaf effort ends up so wide of the mark. The play focuses on the members of a small ladies' book club in Westchester. It is run by the ulterior and imperious Jocelyn; the others include Sara, the group's peacemaker; Megan, who has converted to Judaism to please her second husband; and Kerry, the in-house airhead, devoted to yoga and sexual experimentation. Kerry enters and announces that her "vajajay has been vajazzled." Let me translate: Her vagina has decorated with sequins. She proves this by lifting her skirt for her horrified friends' inspection. The audience is spared that sight, but little else, as Glazer struggles to find laughs in prostate cancer, sex addiction, and animal abuse. (The book the ladies are reading is titled The Homeless Dogs of Egypt. "They are torturing poodles and waterboarding kitties," moans Kerry, less than hilariously.) The plot turns on Jocelyn's plan to sell the rights to the book club -- she considers it her intellectual property -- to a cable network for a reality series. The other ladies are appalled, and, in record time, a four-way catfight is in full swing. (The contents of a fruit plate from Whole Foods are sent flying.) In Act II, a pair of network types shows up to observe the ladies in situ, which means the level of behavior drops even lower. Kerry and Sara find themselves making out, to Jocelyn's horror: "Diving for fish tacos is where I draw the line," she says. "I always thought you'd be a lovely person to go down on," replies Kerry. A minute or two later, Jocelyn, sitting on the couch after a bout of hysterics, announces, "I wet myself." At this point, I would have been willing to wet myself if it would have gotten me out of the DR2 Theatre, but Reading Under the Influence still had more to say. In fact, the script is quite a storehouse of lame gags, from the notion of a puppet version of The Eyes of Laura Mars to the idea that the ladies' objections to the reality series would be instantly wiped out by the chance to meet Ryan Seacrest. As if one decorated vagina joke wasn't enough, Megan announces that she is going to have her...er, you know what..."vajewzzled" with a star of David. I couldn't make this stuff up. That last line is delivered by Barbara Walsh, and it is an unconscionable crime that this talented lady -- last seen as a powerhouse Joanne in the last Broadway revival of Company - -- is wasting her time trying to inject some life into these limp wisecracks. Then again, Joanna Bayless, Sumner Crockett Moore, and Ashley Austin Morris, as the rest of the club, hardly deserve this fate either. The best thing to be said about Wendy C. Goldberg's direction is that it keeps things hustling along. Nevertheless, Alexander Dodge's setting -- with all-white furniture surrounded by narrow paneling -- is a fine study in how to create a feeling of wealth on an Off Broadway budget. Raquel Davis' lighting adds some pleasing touches, and Anne Kennedy's costumes draw amusing distinctions between the characters. The sound designer, Matt Hubbs, is made to try for a laugh with a flushing toilet, but otherwise his work is thoroughly professional. None of this really matters when the script is as dead on arrival as Reading Under the Influence. You have to have a lot of nerve to make fun of crassTV with jokes that wouldn't make it past the table read of the weakest sitcom. In comparison, the Real Housewives shows are far more amusing; next to these one-dimensional harridans, Camille Grammer is Simone de Beauvoir.--David Barbour 
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