Like a bratty kid mouthing profanities, Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson delights in trying to shock and enrage audiences. A case in point is his 2002 play , Stitching, which has come to Los Angeles after a stormy but successful run in New York. The two-character drama is a study in sadomasochistic sex tinged with love.
Abby (Meital Dohan) and Stu (John Ventimiglia) are a married couple who can't decide whether they should have a baby or not. The argument begins as a verbal one but their taunts and insults soon blossom into a Pier Nine brawl. In between thumping and choking each other, they take part in flashback scenes that explain how they came to enter into such a state of connubial bliss.
Abby, a college student, not only slept with Stu for money, but indulged him in his perverse sexual fantasies, which dated back to his adolescence when he masturbated over photographs of concentration-camp victims. As if that weren't sick and bizarre enough, he also tries to talk her into sewing up her vagina for him (hence the title of the play).
Billed as "a graphic exploration of intimacy," Stitching might have worked if the playwright had somehow made you care about his characters, but they are both such nasty, unpleasant people that their dance of death doesn't inspire compassion in you. Instead, you watch it as if it were a carnival freak show.
It must be said, though, that director Haskell and his two actors try their valiant best to make the play work and seem meaningful.
