It was a Sabbath, and did it feel bad that I was watching three females, two of them donning male apparatus, making escalating orgasmic noises in various positions? A tad, just a tad.
Watching 251 feels, to me, like watching someone masturbate. Not that I ever have, but if I had, this would be what it feels like: very awkward, rather strange and even slightly horrific, and terribly confrontational. That was perhaps the main driving force behind 251, to force us to come to terms with sex and sexuality.
A thoroughly ambitious play, 251 had its winning moments which shone among the rest of the more gauche moments. The three solos of Amy Cheng always made me sit up as she walked on stage, dressed as the Roman Queen Melissa, as the Hun princess playing her 18 laments on her pipa, and finally as the beautiful slave-turned-Goddess of Women. Her acting evolved with each different persona and the costumes, every one of them tailored exquisitely to each persona, were enchanting, to say the least.
Cynthia Lee-Macquarrie astounded when she bared herself, emotionally; she, climaxed if you will, at the point where her mother unpacks her suitcase to find her sex tape. Seeing the little dark dots appear on the wooden stage as she stood almost completely still, head bowed low, was a very silent moment filled with awe for her ability.
The set was effective enough, though the television sets seemed unnecessary in the end and the actors’ movement around it was rather pointless and unnatural. They all ensured that no one would be neglected from sight. In fact, they made sure that the audience would not be neglected from participating in the show – when Paul Lucas, a beam of light radiating talent, sought questions from the audience, who did not look mildly interested at his beckoning and looked severely pissed after he took a few jibes at them.
With hindsight, though the show may appear incoherent and lacking soul and direction, it was a one time, and first experience for me, of watching issues and bodies bared onstage. While the issues may not be dealt with so much as just tossed about, like the bodies.
