The first thing you probably notice is that the stage set by Lily Guerin is a giant cage with four openings, one on each side, and with little seats attached to each corner. The next thing you probably notice is that the Yale Cabaret has new tables for the audience. Instead of round, they are long and rectangular, like the kind you might sit at to pass judgment.
The audience is surrounding an arena where some kind of contest may take place. A cockfight, perhaps? The gist of it is that they discover this cock is something of a dick. If that were all, that might be enough, but Bartlett seems to have a bit more on his mind, turning up the heat on the awkward dinner party trope and letting his characters get a bit unhinged, verbally, if not physically.
The driving idea is sexual ambiguity as instanced when a member of a long-standing couple leaves that couple and opts for a lover that is not the same gender as the former lover. It may be that the locus classicus is a man, married to a woman, who, having already done the family bit, takes up with a man.
While on his way to work one day, John is approached by W. Dancing and flirting ensues and, for the first time in his life, John confronts the question of whether he could have sex with a woman. The dickness of John comes in his leaving W in the lurch and going back to M, then being unable to call it off with either M or W. John vacillates at such a pitch that one might wonder why either M or W stays in the game. About that awkward dinner party. But it never quite comes to that.
The actors are all wonderful, and the energy crackles. The pacing is rapid-fire, and the interrelations are all vividly realized. The interaction between Liu and Reese is a driving force in the play because so much derives from an implied situation that precedes the initial break.
