Review: Dirty Books, the Immersive Censorship and Lesbian Erotica Experience

It seems likely that anti-obscenity crusader and US Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock, were he alive today, would look out at our vast fields of online pornography, easily accessible to even the dimmest pre-teens, and say, I told you so. That is, if he ever emerged from his goon cave (most biographers agree that Comstock was a chronic masturbator). The namesake of the 1873 law that made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material through the mail looms large as an offstage character in Dirty Books, now making its world premiere with Bated Breath Theatre Company.

Written and directed by Mara Lieberman “in devising collaboration with members of the ensemble,” it transports contemporary New Yorkers to a time not that long ago, when America’s understanding of the first amendment was far less absolute, and when authors were prosecuted for their free expression. It’s an important reminder that the freedoms we today take for granted are the product of generations of painstaking work on the part of artists and civil libertarians. It’s also, unfortunately, a bit of a snooze.

This immersive affair begins as an exhibit about Comstock’s New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. While presenting a timeline of important legal events, it also invites visitors to write letters to frequently banned authors and commit to the page the sexiest thing ever said to them (don’t worry, this is just optional). It primes the audience for a smart play about censorship, sex, and the state’s unwelcome intrusion into both.

Presiding over the play is the Warden of the Words (Marisa Moureau), charged with sniffing out obscenity. She nabs the wife (Melina Rabin) of a writer (Sammy Rivas) of smutty mass-market paperbacks. They look like a 1950s sitcom family, if Ricky spent his postprandial hours writing lesbian erotica with Fred (Grayson Willenbacher plays the writing partner). As they bang on about a madame and her maid, a much hotter seduction is taking place in the kitchen between Lucy and Ethel (Alexis Pratt plays the wife of the writing partner). Why aren’t they the ones writing this story? Are they prepared to stand before a jury of their peers, as their husbands have, and argue that their titillating depictions of girl-on-girl action have redeeming social value?

I haven’t used any character names because the audience suggests them every night. When a character is introduced, the Warden shines her flashlight on a random audience member and ask for a name. In theory it’s fun, like collectively filling out a mad lib. But in practice it can feel a bit awkward, like being called on in class when you haven’t done the reading (if you go, try to stay focused).

It’s understandable that some minds wander while viewing this strangely listless production. It overflows with juicy ideas and dramatic potential, but there is something persistently off with the pacing, leaving reams of slack where there should be tension. This is despite spirited performances from the cast, all of whom seem to be playing the protagonist in their own minds. That may point to the root of the problem.

The great irony of devised theater is that such a scrupulously collaborative process requires a dictator to make the tough calls, to edit and shape all those precious improvisations into something coherent and sharp. Lieberman hasn’t sufficiently crafted the highs and lows that might really make this script a white-knuckle experience.

Some of that has to do with the unconventional space. Set designer Yung-Hung Sung makes clever use of the corners and closets of this small gallery, but there’s only so much she can do with the institutional lighting, a persistent visual reminder that we’re not in a theater. Stephanie Lopez’s costumes instantly take us back to the mid-20^th century, as does Tojo Rasedoara’s sound design with its period underscoring. But not even John Williams would be able to inject tension into this meandering script which frequently breaks the fourth wall as its solution to keeping the audience engaged.

Most disappointingly for a play that dabbles in documentary, Dirty Books never draws a line from the censorship of the recent past to today. There’s no mention of Memoirs v. Massachusetts or Miller v. California, which feels like both a loose end and a missed opportunity to show how the law regularly struggles to address the latest frontier of the human imagination.

Famously, Justice Potter Stewart, pressed to define “hard-core pornography” in Jacobellis v. Ohio, wrote, “I know it when I see it.” That squeamish vagueness has certainly contributed to our present liberal (arguably libertine) attitude toward free expression. Is this the arc of history bending toward justice, or is it merely our legacy governing institutions desperately trying to keep up with rapid technological progress that will eventually render them irrelevant?

Dirty Books only offers a frisky peek at this dangerously anarchic question. But in 2025, we’re more than ready for full-frontal.