goestoshow

Beyond Therapy is about a man and a woman who’s therapists have suggested that they place a personal ad and respond to a personal ad respectively. The man is bisexual and involved with a guy at the time, but his therapist never knows who he is and is completely unaware of the fact that he’s not straight, let alone in a relationship with a man, hence the bizarre advice. In fact, everything about his therapist is strange. She has a snoopy doll that she talks to, she barks to encourage when she thinks her patient (or porpoise) is doing something positive, and she mixes up words (like dirigible for her secretary, or porpoise for patient). She also has no files in her briefcase, only slinkies, spam, and other toys.

Of course, the woman has slept with her therapist. And he’s always trying to get her to do it again. Yet she always comes back.

Anyways, they meet at a restaurant that appears to have no waiters (in fact, they never get service at this place until pretty much the climax), and proceed to flirt in strange ways. Whether each thinks the other is independent, protective, or vulnerable seems to change with the wind, and they go quickly from taking everything too far (ie. marriage proposals) to being painfully aware of how strange they seem to the other. Which reminds me of some interactions in my recent life.

The play sort of goes on in this strange way for the whole thing. It is bizarre, but also really funny. If the Fringe weren’t over I’d recommend it. I was especially fond of the way that it dealt with alternative relationship structures, because there seems to be so painfully little of that out there, even in the lowercase-eff-fringe of culture.