The frank depiction of sex and the chiseled actors’ nudity turned the play into a sleeper hit. It ran off-Broadway for more than a year and even once hosted a nude audience night, during which patrons were invited to disrobe emotionally and physically.
Gelman’s second play, “Safeword,” is hoping to do for bondage what “Afterglow” did for open marriage. But here, the characters are unfinished, and overall the play promises more than it can deliver.
When the curtain rises at American Theater of Actors, we see Micah (Joe Chisholm) down on his knees as the muscular Xavier (Jimmy Brooks) stands behind him in full leather gear, holding a whip. “Tell me you like it,” Xavier says, as he strikes Micah’s back over and over.
Not much is made of the fact that Micah is white and Xavier is black (all the characters have their race specified in the script) although that dynamic could’ve warranted a play all its own. (Thank you for “Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris!) Instead, we’re asked to focus on their progressive, colorblind existence.
Micah is married to Lauren (Traci Elaine Lee), and the two own a restaurant. Though Lauren is just as creative a chef as Micah, she has quit so he can run the place by himself. She also has no idea about his secret life as a submissive.
Xavier runs his pro dom business from an apartment next to his partner Chris’ place. Chris (Maybe Burke) is white, gender queer and doesn’t believe in marriage, although the couple has been together for seven years.
Lauren and Micah live in the same building as Xavier and Chris — convenient for dramatic purposes, but laughably improbable (the white, black and red set design is courtesy of Ann Beyersdorfer). In a city where finding the right coffee and barber takes endless trial and error, what are the chances of a sub finding a pro dom living above him?
Gelman isn’t one for verisimilitude though. Lauren assumes the marks and burns on her husband’s back are the consequence of CrossFit. Instead, what interests Gelman is getting all his characters together to unleash forced drama. And once Lauren and Chris find out about Micah and Xavier, drama is what we get.
Leaving “Safeword,” audiences should be quizzed. Can straight people be involved in bondage? Yes, we learn. Are all sub men gay? No, we find out. If you’re into bondage when do you need to respect your partner’s safe word? Always.
Would it be too much to ask that we knew the characters as well as we know the rules of bondage? Gelman, who also directs, seems more concerned with disproving myths and setting up perfect tableaus (the scene transitions feel endless) than he does in creating characters we want to spend time with. We’re never privy to what makes these people tick; they’re all painted in broad, generic strokes, like the mock dating profiles you see on the subway.
And we wouldn’t want to go home with any of them.
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‘Safeword’ runs through July 7 at American Theater of Actors, Manhattan; safewordtheplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.