BALLS! – Come See What Goes On In The Minds Of Men
by Karen Tortora-Lee on November 27, 2010
If you weren’t familiar with the body of work playwright Monica Bauer has produced, upon hearing the title of her latest show, BALLS! The Testosterone Plays, it would be very easy to mistakenly dismiss this as a night of 2 one-act plays that do nothing more than skewer fifty percent of the population. Delve a littler deeper, and examine the titles of the shorts – Two Men Walked Into A Bar and Made For Each Other and this notion might be even further cemented. After all, Two Men Walked Into A Bar is as ubiquitous a set up as “How Many Actors Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?” (Answer: Two. One to stand on a chair and change it and one to say “I wish I was up there!”)
If you ARE familiar with playwright Monica Bauer, however, you know that an evening of fluffy, mindless confection is the last thing you’re going to get from her testosterone plays. For while she’s got a breezy way with humor and can evenly lace it throughout her stories, this is a woman whose plays about men pack as strong a punch as anything done by Mamet or Labute. If you want to sip on a cocktail that’s sweet and full of empty calories, you’re clearly walking into the wrong bar.
