This review by Simon Saltzman was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on September 1, 1999. All rights reserved.
Playwright Peter Ackerman calls "Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight" a comedy in three beds. It humorously details how certain words uttered by one couple, during intense moments of passion, become the catalyst for a rift and a midnight therapy session. That all this also serves to disrupt the sexual activities of two other couples, in the own beds and in the privacy of their own apartments, is all part of the evening's fun.
In one bedroom Ben (Mark Kassen), a Jewish graduate student, becomes a victim of coitus interuptus when his blonde mid-Western Gentile girl friend of six months, Nancy (Kate Gleason), fires off "Do me, do me, you hooked-nosed Jew," during orgasm. Almost sent into a state of shock by what he hears and interprets as Nancy's repressed anti-Semitism, Ben withdraws and tries to initiate a dialogue with Nancy about not ever really knowing something about someone, but it only leads to Nancy's suggestion that Ben may be gay.
In the second bed, Nancy's best friend Grace (Clea Lewis), a somewhat ditsy advertising copy-writer with some rather kinky inclinations, is not having the hot and heavy sexual encounter she would like with Gene (Jeffrey Donovan), the tough, but much too sensitive and talkative, professional hit man she has used as her boy-toy for the past week. In the third bed we find Gene's gay younger brother Mark (Andrew Benator), who happens to be Grace's therapist. Mark is in bed with his partner of choice, the seventy-ish Mr. Abramson (Nicholas Kepros) when their playtime is interrupted by a phone call from Grace. Nancy has decided to visit Grace in the middle of the night to cry on her shoulder and get advice. Grace's advice, abetted by Gene's stream of street smarts psychology, is that Nancy and Ben's problems can be fixed with a three-way conference call that will include Ben from his apartment. Helped by the cleverness of Rob Odorisio's three beds settings that appear and retreat neatly from a Manhattan skyline, Grace and Gene and Mark and Mr. Abramson, while committed to confronting their own highly intimate pursuits, also become immersed in getting Nancy and Ben together again. Think X-rated sitcom.
Gleason is a delight as Nancy, whose sexual satisfaction is apparently heightened by saying the most outrageous things. The attractive Kassen gives us the classic reactionary sensitivity of a nice bright Jewish boy suddenly on the defensive. But you can expect to find yourself defenseless against the deliberately fussy bedroom behavior of Donovan, as the hit man, who needs his libido fired by order and intellectual stimulation, and Lewis, whose pleas for "fucking and whacking . . . fucking and whacking" are all too sadly ignored. Not to be unappreciated are the constant stream of very funny one-liners shared, in turn, by Benator, as the therapist with a yen for older men, and Kepros, as his carpet-salesman lover, who admits he hasn't come this close to pleasure since 1962.
So what if Ackerman's characters stretch the boundaries of reality, and the play's premise and predicaments run the risk of absurdity? What cannot be denied is the laugh quotient in the script and the laugh meter in us. After all, it isn't every writer who can make a comical case for the sexy side of anti-Semitism, the sweetly vulnerable side of a hardened criminal, and the nurturing side of an eccentric's sexual dysfunction? John Rando is the director who gives this comedy for the new millennium its charge, even as he makes us fondly recall the days when the frenzied and frenetic sex comedy was the mainstay of Broadway. Is history repeating itself? Go. Laugh. HHH
-- Simon Saltzman