There is no easy way to address or present the subject of rape. But The Pair of Animals from Brooklyn does an amazingly deft job of approaching this difficult issue from a wide range of angles in this show.Although billed as a company (or at least a duo), this one-woman show makes full use of the considerable talents of Antonia Lassar under the subtle direction of Angela Dumlao. Well, maybe not so subtle at every turn — but even the broad strokes are there to add a simultaneously comic and uncomfortable distance from a very personal and painful topic. This is evidenced in the opening moments of the show, when Lassar enters as a mute clown while a recorded voice over recounts statistics on sexual violence, only to be punctuated by farts and flatulence. There is no way not to laugh and be ashamed of laughing at the same time — an intentionally created ambivalence.Other segments of the show are equally meta, or more so. Lassar plays a variety of characters who have come to be interviewed by a playwright about an incident of rape on a college campus, echoing perhaps the situation and structure of Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project. Moving with a surprising clarity and conviction among the voices of the victim’s Slavic counselor, the female member of the faculty assigned as advisor to the young man accused of the crime and the boy himself, Lassar’s quick cuts from one to another make this a performance of exceptional stature.Even brief interludes that involve dancing to Pop and Disco tunes whose titles include the word “survivor” — with thanks to Gloria Gaynor and Destiny’s Child — take on a level of pathos due to a slight shift in expression and hint of emotional collapse.It would be easy to depict the issues and events as one-sided. But this script takes the higher road, which is also the more tragic: seeing all the players as wounded and deserving to be understood. This act of grace makes us see this post-traumatic state by means of an art that is strangely and truly delightful.
This article appears in Jun 1-8, 2016.