Pair of Partygoers Turn Up the Heat in the Kitchen Kim Davies’s ‘Smoke’ Explores Power and Desire
Anita GatesSeptember 8, 2014: Suddenly, the sexual power games in David Ives’s Venus in Fur seem distant, almost artificial. Instead of the arrogant director and the auditioning actress of Venus, Kim Davies’s Smoke gives us two self-possessed contemporary young New Yorkers in a kitchen at an uptown sex party. John (Stephen Stout), an old hand at these gatherings, is a would-be artist, still interning at 31; Julie (Madeleine Bundy) is a 20-year-old college student with dropout plans. “I think I’m going to try to do as little as possible with my life,” she announces. This may be her first party. Both plays involve a man and a woman alone in a room, grappling with the overwhelming question of power — who holds it, and how it will be used — in an arena of escalating sexual tension. The premise of the intense, provocative and exceedingly clever Smoke, having its world premiere in the Flea Theater’s intimate basement space, could put off anyone who finds sadomasochism, bondage and discipline rather curious hobbies. It shouldn’t. The Flea’s description of the production is misleading: “nudity” (not really) and “sexual situations” (please, the whole 75 minutes is a sexual situation). But the plot is intriguing, the dialogue is consistently surprising, and the performances are exceptional, making a convincing argument that sex is exactly like every other kind of human interaction.
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