The 'Gene Pool' needs cleaning

Arizona Daily Wildcat photo courtesy of Wayne Pearce Photo The Gene Pool is playing at Pima Community College's Center for the Arts Black Box Theatre through January 31. For ticket information call the Borderlands Box Office at 882-7406.

What happens when a lesbian couple raising a teenage son faces the inevitable question: "Moms," (his cute plural term for the two female parents), "who's my father?"

Borderland Theatre's The Gene Pool, playing right now at the Black Box Theatre at Pima Community College's West Campus, poses this question among others in a light, almost slapstick way. The son, Peter - so named because (get this) one of his moms said at his birth, "Look, it's got a peter!" - is motivated by his persistent girlfriend to inquire about his paternal origins. He is informed by one of his mothers that on his 18th birthday - which is just a few days away - he will be allowed by contract to get in touch with the sperm donor whose genes he carries. After being rebuffed by the natural father on the phone, his moms figure out a more inventive arrangement by which their son and the sperm donor - alternately called "that dickhead" - will meet.

You might think by the sound of this story that the playwright or the director would investigate issues of lesbian partnership and natural parenting in between the punchlines and invectives. But this light-hearted comedy is barely aware of its own loose threads, let alone the worsted fabric of its modern context. Playwright Christi Stewart-Brown's vision of a lesbian household appears as if through Newt Gingrich's eyes - rife with sexual abandon and explicit language. Enclosed in the more salacious humor of this play is a stereotype of the homosexual lifestyle, one in which the gravity that draws sexual organs together has a more significant pull on their hearts than the gravity of social issues. There is a similar single-mindedness to the theme of paternal genetic determination. When Peter meets his natural father, we find out that they both like the same music, cry at the drop of a dime and scratch below the waist. The deepest of Peter's concerns is to receive a picture of his father during each of the ensuing years so that he'll know what to expect of his looks.

Director Chris Wilken accents the prime-time television humor of this play with cardboard cut-out characterization and exaggerated blocking. Fortunately, the cast is saved by two characters who avoid being sucked into the carnivalesque script and its P.T. Barnum direction. Michael Yarema plays the son, Peter, with a metronomic sense of timing. Since he is the source of much of the play's comedy, and his humor is no more complex than the repetition of a few key phrases ("Fucking A" being one of them), his ability is all the more evident in the fact that he pulls it off without breaking rhythm. His mom, Mira, played by Suzi List, is a comedic character always riding the wave of her sexual impulses. It is to her credit that the character is tempered by an overarching sense of fidelity, be it to her partner, Claire, (rather innocuously played by Carlisle Ellis) or to the emotions that invigorate her sometimes-vapid lines.

There's no startling intellect to this play, although there is often satisfactory humor. After Mira gives her son, Peter, condoms for his birthday, she produces something with which he can practice putting it on: a homegrown zucchini. It's funny because he had complained earlier about having to eat her zucchini, and the humor of his written part is limited to the category of "stuff that had been mentioned previously and is now mentioned again." This kind of humor is like water: see-through and nothing to get too excited about. I laughed instinctively, as if caused by my disposition to mirth rather than anything especially funny on-stage.

If you like to go out and enjoy saucy humor, I say go see it. It costs $7 for students (as much as a first-run movie) and the Black Box Theatre at Pima West is a nice venue. But if you are looking for good entertainment, something that will last in your mind after the image presented before you is gone, there are actually better sitcoms on TV.