Dirty Business

The set and lighting designs strive to convey passionate chaos, a central theme in the Phaedra story. There's plenty of chaos in Alex Lopez's constantly changing disco-hued lights, likewise in the sprawling, compartmentalized set with separate spaces devoted to complex reconstructions of a bathhouse, a bedroom, a conservatory, a kitchen, and what looks like -- stage center -- a boardroom. But there's not much passion. As the actors fling themselves from area to area in a frenzied whirl of costume and color, the overriding feeling is one of confusion, unconvincingly tempered by grinding hips and lascivious looks.

Last Planet is a company I admire for its boldness and intelligence. From their inaugural season in 1999 -- an entire festival devoted to playwright Wallace Shawn -- to their recent productions of Brenton and Fassbinder, director John Wilkins and his cohorts have matched programming daring with theatrical ardor. If any local company has demonstrated an understanding of human desire, it's this one. In fact, I would pay good money to see a Last Planet production of Racine's original tragedy. The controlled music of Racine's poetry would act as the perfect frame for Wilkins' explosive style. As it is, I just don't share the director's enthusiasm for Maguire.

Upon closer inspection, the theater's enduring fascination with the Phaedra myth isn't so far removed from its interest in exploring necrophilia, bigamy, and other nooks and crannies of the darkly erotic. If, like Phaedra, the lengthy canon of plays dealing with alternative sexual relationships succeeds in making us believe in -- maybe even empathize with -- characters who prefer humping anything other than a live, grown-up human being, it's largely due to the skill of playwrights, directors, and actors in conveying their protagonists' all-consuming, chaotic passion. Passion is Phaedra's throbbing engine. Without it, the myth -- whatever form it takes -- is little more than the lukewarm story of a pathetic middle-aged woman's aborted fantasies.