Safeword
Written by S. Asher Gelman
Directed by S. Asher Gelman
American Theatre of Actors
April 20, 2019
Production website
💉💉 out of 5.

If only this play needed a “safe word”  But it clearly doesn’t  The play here is strictly vanilla and actually not very interesting vanilla.  I do believe that our playwrights intention here was to introduce the average audience member to the world of bandage, domination, and sadomasochism – but what we get is more housewife with a cute whip.

The play starts out with a most provocative scene at the top of a set where a leather clad “dom” is abusing his willing victim.  That got everyone’s attention – but it never back to that powerful first image.  Sad when your best moment is the very first one of the show.  

The piece is a bit contrived.  The husband of a heterosexual marriage is getting hungry for some humiliation and abuse and it is clearly not going to come from his wife.  He seeks attention elsewhere at the hands of a man with a dungeon.  And oddly this man’s dungeon is in the very same building.  Convenient . .   It is a bit hard to believe that a man that was going to secretly sneak out of his relationship to have this illicit encounter would find it in his very same condo building.  Wouldn’t you going looking somewhere else?  

The play does have a bit of interest when the wife, newly discovered that she has been cheated on – questions the “dom” as to reasons and mechanics of BDSM.  The questions are interesting – the answers not so much.

And what is up with a set that encircles the entire theatre with cutouts of other units in the building.  Why is it spread around the auditorium?  It just seemed a bit “Bye Bye Birdie” for them to be poking their heads out of different windows.  Really odd.   

Perhaps there will be a really good play exploring the intriguing world of BDSM – but this is not that play.