The Qualms
written by Bruce Norris
directed by Pam MacKinnon
Playwrights Horizons
July 5, 2015

Production website     💉💉💉 out of 5.

I came in expecting to hate this play and simply found myself riveted. The plot is simple: four couples of varied sexual backgrounds get together in a beautiful beach home to have a swingers sex party! I was thinking I was going to hear a lot of provocative talk and some, if not a lot of deliciously gratuitous nudity. But, no! The sex party turned out to be as strained and mundane as you might imagine your parents would give. Yech! I get it. Condoms are thrown around as confetti but never used for their given purpose. Lots of sex talk resolved itself into talk of parking difficulties outside the beach home and thoughts on food delivery in the area.

The fun for me was figuring out how does any group of people get together and suddenly jump to take off their clothes and get it on? How does that happen? What does that look like? How could one ever get sexually going when your “party” contains the thin, the fat, the effeminate, the loutish, the juvenile and the sourly aged? Don’t you find at least one of those guests to be a cock block? Where do you go from there? – lots of talk, too much wine, and a constantly hovering of the never-changing buffet. Newcomers to a sex party – – fun to watch? Absolutely!