Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra – Location, Tickets, Reviews
For the world premiere of his new play, Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra, Kirk Lynn, an artistic director with Austin-based Rude Mechs, returns to New York for a third time this season (earlier this year the Rude Mechs were at Lincoln Center with Stop Hitting Yourself and he penned the libretto to Bum Phillips All American Opera).
Directed by Anne Kauffman for Playwrights Horizons, this deeply strange and occasionally moving play begins with a couple who vow to reenact each other’s entire sexual lives in the year leading up to their wedding. What follows is a dark and funny look at how sex connects, abuses, breaks, and makes us whole, often at the same time.
Maxamoo
We had a bizarre experience at Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra. After act one, we were mildly intrigued, at times amused by Lynn’s oddball dialogue, and the charming conceit of sexual role-playing (all achieved with very little nudity, we hasten to add). But as the first slow-paced, sloppily constructed hour neared intermission, a revelation occurred that hooked us and kept us hooked through the entirety of act two. This play springs to life in its second hour, which is achingly funny, full of intellectual danger, and subtly beautiful. It almost makes up for the tedious dramaturgical failure of the first act.
Lynn’s writing here gains focus and charge when it turns from humorous to sinister, when the sitcom qualities of Kama Sutra give way to a startling conversation about how the trust, intimacy, and personal peccadilloes of sex, at its best, cleave human hearts together and the shame, vulnerability, and horror of sex, at its worst, can do the exact same thing. The themes of Kama Sutra are messy – almost as messy as the first half of the play itself – but they are thought-provoking, challenging, and satisfying.
Public Opinion
Have you seen Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra? What did you think? Comment below or tweet to us at @maxamoo.
Critics’ Review
Critics have largely found this play to be bewildering and distant, though not without good performances, direction, and design elements:
New York Times
A Journey to Intimacy That’s Nobody’s Business but Their Own
NYtheater Now
[T]his play never once leads the audience to dwell on any difficult feelings as the play has many comedic moments (which the actors portrayed beautifully) keeping it softer yet still delicately on topic.
TheaterMania
Kirk Lynn explores the confounding boundaries between sexuality and intimacy in his new play at Playwrights Horizons.
TICKETS
$60 – $75 (click here for tickets)
DATES
Performances through May 11, 2014
LOCATION
Playwrights Horizons
416 W 42nd Street
New York City
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RUNNING TIME
2 hours 15 minutes, one intermission
CAST & CREW
(partial list)
Written by Kirk Lynn
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Featuring Maxx Brawer, Zoe Sophia Garcia, Rebecca Henderson, Ismenia Mendes, Will Pullen & Chris Stack