The Blue Room The Jungle Theater’s press kit describes David Hare’s The Blue Room as a “striking meditation on the search for love.” But this circular tale, told in ten vignettes, details debauchery and lust. Perhaps some of the characters are seeking more than just a roll in the hay, but the majority have their hearts set on a quickie. I’m not sure how deep Hare intended for the characters to get. Some of these characters ñ an au pair, an aristocrat, a married woman, a student ñ express a desire for love, but most seem to be articulating no more than a deep desire to make whoopie. More than fixating on love, they seem engaged by the desire to fill something that is missing within themselves, to stimulate a part of them that their other lovers aren’t fulfilling, or to while away time in their misspent lives. The Jungle Theater’s press kit describes David Hare’s The Blue Room as a “striking meditation on the search for love.” But this circular tale, told in ten vignettes, details debauchery and lust. Perhaps some of the characters are seeking more than just a roll in the hay, but the majority have their hearts set on a quickie. I’m not sure how deep Hare intended for the characters to get. Some of these characters ñ an au pair, an aristocrat, a married woman, a student ñ express a desire for love, but most seem to be articulating no more than a deep desire to make whoopie. More than fixating on love, they seem engaged by the desire to fill something that is missing within themselves, to stimulate a part of them that their other lovers aren’t fulfilling, or to while away time in their misspent lives.

Whatever the playwright’s intent, The Blue Room is filled with familiar situations and emotions. People of dramatically different backgrounds come together unexpectedly as they pursue their desires. The couples are often divided by social class as well as gender and their intentions. For example, a fatuous playwright and a ditsy model. He’s charmed by the fact that she doesn’t know who he is and bloviates about this amazing discovery. Or a cab driver who, while pressuring an au pair into a romantic clinch, reassures her that “It means something, I promise.”

The Blue Room was inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. Actors from the first production in 1921 were arrested on obscenity charges. The play and the subsequent trial created so much controversy, in fact, that it acted as the flashpoint for anti-Semitic riots in Berlin. Perhaps it was the unconventional theme of projecting one’s desires onto a lover that sent people into a frenzy. Whatever the case may be, Hare’s play is not nearly scandalous enough in this age to make anyone want to riot.

As we take our seats, we see a ragged-edged drape hanging in front of the stage. Onto it, backstage antics are projected. In between scenes, the drape descends and we see actors Kris Nelson and Kirsten Frantzich ñ the only two performers in the play ñ frantically removing their costumes and re-clothing for the next scene. This odd black and white projection is accompanied by an eerie saxophone.

The play’s ten scenes are strung together by ten couplings with each featuring Frantzich and Nelson. In each vignette, they intimately unite and the length of their interlude is projected onto the back wall of the stage ñ one as short as zero minutes. While they scramble under the sheets or create some kind of two-backed monster in the open air, the lights dim and all we see is a blue mass surrounded by a stygian darkness, in which Frantzich and Nelson are anything but quiescent. The one thing that disturbs this production is several unpalatable Northern English accents which prelude their naughty transgressions. This is a famously difficult accent to do ñ even native English performers trip over it’s eccentric rhythms and liquid vowels ñ and how telling that the performers in this production stumble more with the language of the play than with The Blue Room‘s demand that they peel off their clothes. A lesson for all actors: Nakedness is easy; accents are hard. (Amy Danielson)

The Blue Room plays through June 16 at the Jungle Theater, (612) 822-7063