I Stand Before You Naked

I Stand Before You Naked

Theatre Unlimited
10943 Camarillo St. North Hollywood

This play, with one of the most commercial titles in theatrical history, debuted in London in 1992. It's been six years since it's had a major production in Los Angeles. There's some nudity in the show. What the show is really about is one of the recurring themes of the playwright, Joyce Carol Oates: the paradoxical vulnerability and perseverance of women. Two scenes with the ensemble bracket a series of mostly monologues in which the female characters expose themselves emotionally. There's a young woman, the morning after a night of hot passion with her man that's left her with a sore lip; a substitute teacher who's tried to seduce a teenage boy; the wife of a serial killer; an anorexic-bulimic; a mental patient obsessed with the notion of nuclear holocaust; an exotic dancer who chooses a fellow to date who is just so wrong; a wealthy philanthropist who loves her gun; a woman with an aversion to feminists whose own face is disappearing; a woman who fears that her relationship with her man is disintegrating; an unwed mother-to-be whose feisty fetus is talking to her from inside the womb, really, really loudly.

Thru - Jan 25, 2015