REVIEW: Duo finds fun in the bedroom
'Porn for Puritans' explores the many joys and pitfalls of sex

The Dallas Morning News - July 9, 2004

By Lawson Taitte

As you can tell from the title, Porn for Puritans is all about being conflicted. When it comes to our love lives, we all fantasize about mutually exclusive things like faithfulness and variety, unbridled passion and sober respectability.

Leigh Tomlinson and Tim Wardell wrote and perform this piece that previewed at WaterTower Theatre's Out of the Loop Festival last spring and opened Thursday for a two-weekend run at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary.

Porn for Puritans sometimes feels like a sequence of short sketches – but it has less contrivance and more substance than the stuff of standard improv. As a study of modern dating mores, it most resembles the first act of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change! But that more established hit, with its longer sequences and more worked-out songs, seems processed and artificial next to Porn for Puritans' franker, less-varnished take on sex and love – and sex.

Not that Porn for Puritans has a vastly original take on its well-worn topic. We've all heard the basic premise before: Women want relationships, and men want what they can get. It's just that Ms. Tomlinson's and Mr. Wardell's perceptions are a little sharper and a whole lot funnier than most of what passes for contemporary wisdom in such matters.

A case in point is the extended sequence dealing with the baseball metaphor for the relationship between the sexes – you know, that whole matter of getting to first base, and so on. The various stages of novelty, embarrassment and sudden joy that characterize the sport's early innings have seldom been shared so openly in mixed company, though guys may swap stories in locker rooms and gals confide in each other ... wherever it is gals talk about such things.

Fortunately, Ms. Tomlinson and Mr. Wardell have a light enough touch that we get the jokes without blushing too badly. Even a bedroom sequence in which the two illustrate the inevitable awkwardness of couples' initial sexual encounters is hilarious without becoming, well, actual porn. Still, be prepared for a level of frankness comparable to that, say, of Sex and the City.

Under Evelyn Mullins' directions, the writers perform their own material capably. Mr. Wardell, an experienced member of improvisational comedy troupes, might be a bit more impressive in his range of voices and personalities. He also gets the best of Lincoln Apeland's songs, "The Monogamy Blues."