Review: Laughs Multiply, Slowly, in The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits

Ah, to become the author of a best-selling book, marry a billionaire, and be able to rub your ex’s face in it. That, my friends, is truly the American dream. At least it is for Danielle (Rebecca Larsen), one of four desperate people in The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits, Michael Shaw Fisher’s mildly amusing comedy about the economics of morals and marriage vows. Yes, yes, that old chestnut.

The play begins in the humble home, complete with collegiate futon (set by Mia Criss), of broke substitute English teacher Bobby (Schoen Hodges) flipping through a small collection of vinyl and choosing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” But his anxious, equally broke wife, Elise (Leigh Wulff), thinks it an extraordinarily inappropriate selection. What sort of mood is he trying to set anyway for their get-together with Bobby’s former wife, Danielle (Dr. Danielle, if you please), and her filthy-rich fitness guru husband, Carson (Richardson Cisneros-Jones)? What sort indeed, especially when neither has any idea what this power couple wants with lowly them.

They soon find out after well-suited Elise, oddly cradling a stuffed rabbit, and Carson, gold chain exposed (costumes by Alli Miller-Fisher), bulldoze their way into Bobby and Elise’s home and start love-fighting during an awkward dinner of oysters and pomegranate soup. Turns out that they have an indecent proposal for the money-strapped couple, one that will make Bobby and Elise incredibly rich in one night but that might also upend their future happiness. What could that proposal be?

With a title like The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits, you’ve probably guessed that it involves an orgy, and you’d be right. But that’s as much as I’ll give away, since there are a few (sort-of) twists during the play’s 75 minutes. Not that you won’t see those coming. Fisher, who also directs, seems to be harking after a plot that smacks of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Albee is even name-checked in the first 15 minutes), with one couple going after another in a kind of sick game. But the play’s shallow characters, tepid humor, and trite motivation for Danielle’s mean-spirited proposal negate any real comparison.

Still, there are laughs to be had in this uneven comedy, especially in the outrageous orgy scene, which involves various permutations of the couples in the frenzied act of humping like … well, like rabbits. We’re meant to understand that when greed and desire are in the mix, nothing can prevent the classes from shtupping.

Cisneros-Jones stands out from the cast for his ego-inflated Carson, who has a laugh like a jackhammer. He takes Fisher’s half-funny lines and puts them in submission holds until they yield up chuckles, with some of the funniest moments coming from the audience. “I’m a power bottom, if that helps,” Carson says, trying to convince Bobby into a foursome. “What’s that?” said a man to his companion at the performance I attended. He soon found out. Hilarious.

Elsewhere, Larsen and Wulff do their best with lackluster lines, and Hodges gets laughs as the Georgie-Porgie schoolteacher who’s willing to bang a man for the chance at a life of writerly ease. The actors all must contend with Charlie Kilgore’s glaring lighting, which would send any self-respecting power bottom shrieking for a dark corner. But Fisher’s sound design works well, blaring Gaye’s sex anthem and Mussorgsky’s witchy tone poem Night on Bald Mountain to solid comic effect.

The end, sadly, offers little payoff, but Fisher does get his point across. Money makes sex complicated; if only we kept it simple, like the rabbits.