Just Say Love
Despite the salacious image used to promote Just Say Love, currently playing at the Black Box Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, the play doesn’t contain any actual onstage nudity or sex--not quite; it does come close.
The play is a two-character love story about a young, intellectual cutie and a rough and tumble blue-collar construction worker who meet in a park one day and, after a quickie, find that just can’t stay away from each other. With the two men being polar opposites in every way, the play nearlyplots itself, examining their ongoing friendship as they slowly allow each other to open up become more than just sex buddies.
The two men twist and slide around each other’s emotional walls and bridges, and in the process they challenge each other and bring themselves out of their respective emotional cocoons. There is nothing new here in terms of the content or story line, and in fact parts of it reminded me (fondly) of the first segment of Harvey Firestein’s Torch Song Trilogy. But what is new and exciting in Just Say Love is the way playwright David Mauriello allows the two characters to show tenderness and understanding even when their friendship gets rocky and things are not going so well. The play contains plenty of humor, but it’s never at the expense of the characters; rather, the laughs rely on the situations they find themselves involved in.
The play’s title is a quote from a dialectic by Plato, which the young man is reading in the park at the beginning of the play. He is taken with the concept of Plato’s idea of platonic love, and thinks that incorporating that ideal into his own life will allow him to live on a higher plane and free him from the suffocating bonds of physical and emotional love. Ha!
The construction worker proves to be his undoing, and although the young man tries to hold to the ideal put forth by Plato, he can’t resist the charms of his sex buddy. Indeed, I doubt that few could. The construction worker, played by James Ryen, is a crude, sweaty, slovenly--but gorgeous--hunk, and the intellectual, played by Michael Lemieux, is a short, fit, tidy--and also cute--academic. They are a perfect match for each other, if they can only figure out how to make it all work.
The construction worker is about to become a father, and although he can’t deny his attraction to the intellectual, he’s not ready to let go of the trappings of his straight life. A surprising twist at the end of the play worthy of a James Kirkwood plot line suddenly sends the relationship off in an unexpected direction, and it’s apparent that the two lovers might just be able to make their relationship work after all.
This staging of Just Say Love is made believable by the undeniable chemistry of Ryen and Lemieux. Indeed, I can’t imagine any one else playing the roles. The actors and the characters synch up completely, and they take the performance to a level that will make you forget you’re watching a play and convince you that you’re a fly on the wall watching as the two try to work out their friendship.
So go spend an evening with Just Say Love! It reminded me of friendships I’ve had, and will probably do the same for you.
Now through June 30
Plaza Black Box Theatre
at the Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street, Boston
Tickets: www.bostontheatrescene.com or call 617-933-8600
$25 evening performances, $20 matinees
Thurs., Fri., Sat. at 8PM, Sun. at 3PM
