As we notice in "Sex is My Specialty," Sex in America is not such a hard thing. Common interests speak clearly, concisely, and in business-like tones. Love in America is a hard thing - but not less so than in other repressed
countries.

It's tough to be optimistic, but sometimes that's all we've got to save ourselves. Cradle to grave robbery was the specialty of the friends of  comrade Joe, leaving little life to live in such as communist outposts as Romania. Clara Berta was born into a Hungarian family that had been living in a Romania ruled by proxies of Joseph Stalin since 1948. As often happens, even in the best of homes, and even in far-off Stalinist nightmares, you will find a daughter upstaged by Daddy Jr., the little man, the favorite son. Clara Berta plugs us into her story at just that point.

Truth may seem better than fiction, but truth is different when carried by the stork. What lies ahead for that gurgling baby girl? Clara's mother, a good woman, insisted she remain a virgin. Clara, the good girl, remained there until she was safely married. She soon sensed there was something lacking. Then  reality struck, but it was here in the USA that she found herself and something she could truly enjoy.

Just as "Cheers" most perfectly suited the A.A. generation, the autobiographical "Sex is My Specialty" offers, in a nutshell, a alternative convenient for today's safe-sex generation. The house lights go down, as before, and they stay down, for a few minutes. When the light come up, we are there to observe a  true-life story emerging from the darkness - a saga that might serve, in real life, to fill in those echoing spaces between the chasm of the chance encounter, and the leap-of-faith intimacy it conveniently presumes.

Thus, for most denizens of this 21st century interpretation of reality, the greatest gratification can only derive from sex in the most piquant theoretical terms. Out of the awkward silence, Clara's story unfolds. And so it is, in this neo-Restoration  comedy, "Sex is My Specialty."

"Sex is My Specialty" offers us a glimpse into another private world. Experienced Director Monique Edwards (Philly's "Teena Davis" ) sets a sharp, snappy, well-regulated pace. The performance is brassy, heightened by Juliet Klanchar's sparse but  natural lighting, and punctuated by short video "flashbacks," generated from Ms. Berta's family photographs, cleverly designed by Mae Edwards, with an audio track by Sese Abejon.

Autobiographical material cannot seem much of a stretch for an actor, but here we find ourselves asking how much of the play is the stuff of fiction, and how much is . In a short hour Ms. Berta spins a yarn over a life not easy to package for public c onsumption. As the story evolves, the more scandalous elements fade and dovetail neatly into the realities of her life and
exploits. Like Casanova in reverse, she adopts the prototypically feminine position of acceptance of life's compromises, and reports, with a bittersweet note of optimism, Success!

If practice makes perfect, how autobiographical is this story? Clara Berta offers us only a demure smile.

-Dean Timonear

Back to the Press page