WET is Sexy

In the final show of its second season, the Washington Ensemble Theatre tackles a question for the ages: What is Sexy? The answer is not so much a play as a series of ruminations, borne of an open-ended actor's game in which several of WET's founding members (amongst other UW theater students) participated. The ensemble developed it further over the past year into the work as it now stands, buoyantly directed by Marc Kenison and playing until May 29th.

The piece begins with an actor disrobing (nice abs!) and launches into the full six-member cast bumping and grinding in their skivvies, something straight out of Cabaret. It's borderline cringe-worthy and, had it lasted any longer, we would have felt seriously embarrassed for everyone involved. Luckily, that was just the opening bit, and from there we turned our attention to a girl with a high-pitched voice flirting and giggling with an unseen man. That was the modus operandi for the first half: a little vignette with one or two actors, while the others pair off and writhe against each other until it's someone else's turn to take center stage and make with the sexy.

Even though the skits occasionally fall into cliche, there's a lot of good material here. Some of our favorites included a double entendre-filled scene where a plumber shows up to work on the pipes, and an erotic chair-humping that is probably the funniest thing in the show. WET covers its bases: girl-on-girl is sexy, boy-on-boy is sexy, S&M is sexy, accents are sexy, words are sexy. Basically everything regarding sex is sexy, except, of course, for the act itself.

The tone shifts in the second half, and that's where things get a little problematic. We liked the sudden, visually-striking change in atmosphere (in fact, it elicited a couple gasps from the crowd), but the opening sketch, in which a couple wakes up together "the morning after" went on for too long. We think we get the gist of this piece---it seemed to be a microcosm of all romantic entanglements, the push-pull between desire and freedom with its typical pitfalls and arguments, interspersed with words of wisdom from such erotic luminaries as Shakespeare and Madonna. Still, like our description, it was a bit much. What starts out strongly ends up just rambling.

Despite that, we found the second act to be unexpectedly moving, especially the material culled from interviews with average people as to what they found sexy, about themselves or others. We teared up a few times (not an unusual occurrence, as we are particularly cry-prone, but we didn't see it coming at a sex play). While we enjoyed that the work had two distinct sections, our companion thought there were pacing issues and would have preferred a little more continuity. Either way, the actors are all strong performers and way hot---no complaints on the eye candy. We left the show more than a little turned on and with a greater appreciation for all the sexiness around us. Then we rolled over and promptly fell asleep.

Running now through May 29th
Thursdays-Mondays at 8pm
The Little Theatre
608 19th Ave E
Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets