Sexy Laundry @ Soul Rep Theatre Company
—Reviewed by Ramona Harper
“Sexy laundry” conjures up skimpy, thonged undies from Victoria’s Secret, in Valentine’s Day-red. Add a titillating copy of Sex for Dummies prominently displayed on Alice and Henry’s king bed in the stylish hotel-room set of Michele Riml’s sensitive comedy Sexy Laundry, and you believe you’re about to peep-show the fantasy of bringing sexy back. But 25 years of marriage, three kids and a mortgage have taken their toll on Alice and Henry’s love life. Romantic fantasies have taken a backseat just when you were musing that a rear view (his or hers!) might be a great starting place for rekindling their romantic love.
Riml’s 2004 play became an international stage hit soon after it was first produced in regional theaters in her native Canada. It made its way to the lower 48 four years later, and the rest is history. Beyond Canada and the U.S., the show has been produced in Britain, South Africa, Germany, Poland, and remains very popular after nearly two decades.
The Soul Rep Theatre Company presents Sexy Laundry with direction, scenic design (Daylene Carter assists), and sound design all by the multi-talented Dee Hunter-Smith, the company’s associate artistic director. The 90-minute play with intermission runs at the Margo Jones Theater in Fair Park through February 18, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Co-founded in 1995 in Dallas by Guinea Bennett-Price, Tonya Holloway and Anyika McMillan-Herod, Soul Rep “exists to provide quality, transformative Black theater” with a vision to “shift the paradigm of how the Black experience is valued.”
Playwright Riml must be an old soul, because she was a white Canadian of only 37 when she created this comedy about Alice and Henry Lane, a long-married couple who decide to check into a swank hotel (at the wife’s urging) for a weekend getaway—to see if they can reignite the spark in a passionless, timeworn relationship. Or end it.
Wise beyond her years, Riml must have understood early on about the universality of what it takes to stay in love, elements that go beyond age, time and space, race, ethnicity, or gender. Soul Rep affirms Riml’s impassioned insights with a Black cast and production support team doing the honors.
As a classic sitcom dramatic conflict, Sexy Laundry airs the dirty linen of a husband who has become cynical about romantic intimacy, stuck in a personal rut, and set in his conservative ways. In deadpan humor that’s almost a near-death experience of passionless expression and textbook Romance Avoidance Behavior, Angelo Reid as Henry (understudying for Bill Hass at the performance reviewed) plays his half of the duet with poker-faced seriousness.
As Alice, Octavia Y. Thomas (understudying for Tonya Holloway) fantasizes about the redemptive passion she so desperately wants to renew with Henry. Thomas is an absolute winner as Alice, a joy to watch, and plays the part with the effervescence of the finest bubbly—to Henry’s pop-top can of flat ginger ale.
It’s hard to determine, however, whether Henry’s humorless recalcitrance (toward doing the work to save his marriage) is spot-on with the playwright’s intention, a directorial choice, or a rising what’s-the-use attitude Reid perceives in the character. Maybe all of the above.
Reid’s characterization brought to mind sitcom humor from the golden age of television: The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, were dueling banjos who insulted and threatened each other every week, but always made-up with Ralph Kramden gushing, “Baby, you’re the greatest.”
As a Honeymooners’ spinoff, The Flintstones (a sitcom cartoon), had the same rollicking rollercoaster relationship dynamics. But here’s the thing: The Kramdens’ and The Flintstones’ flinty actions always seemed hilarious, regardless of how sardonic or sarcastic they became toward their partners.
In Sexy Laundry, the cantankerous is more palpable than the humorous for most of the play. Alice and Henry’s continual bickering and sexual fantasies, acted out with AARP-like manual instructions, feel contrived and awkward. In other words, the comedic humor is heartfelt, but could have been a lot funnier—or is this what’s meant by being “poignant”?
And if you are of the feminine persuasion, you just might adore Alice while flat-out casting shade on Henry. You might want to box Henry’s ears when he stoically proclaims, “You married an engineer, Alice, not a poet” or “Nothing ever measures up to what’s in our mind, Alice.” Does this sound like a couple undressed for success? It’s hard to watch a marital meltdown.
On the other hand, it’s in the seriousness that the real fun begins. Does the threat of losing it all scare the bejeezus out of a man, enough to make him straighten up and fly right? Is the thought of having your man walk out on you enough to make a woman find contentment and happiness in the humdrum of everyday living—in the safe space called “home”?
Check out Sexy Laundry yourself to evaluate the cost of love and loss, and to see what laugh-worthy antics lovers are willing to perform when the phenomenal power of unconditional love is teetering on the line.
To the moon, Alice!
When: February 10-12 & February 15-18
Where: Magnolia Lounge/Margo Jones Theater, 1121 First Ave., Dallas, TX 75210
Web: soulrep.org
