Theater Review: The Deep Throat Sex Scandal

REVIEW AND BOTTOM PHOTO BY VINCENT LAMBERT

Porn fans will be happy to know that award-winning director Jerry Douglas is back, this time with a new show that opened off-Broadway last Sunday. The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, scripted by first-time playwright David Bertolino, follows the making of the infamous 1972 adult film that garnered worldwide attention. And the play is not just for fans of straight porn. This is a provocative tale that will interest all followers of the skin biz and showbiz as well. After all, this is an independent movie that cost $25,000 to make and went on to gross $600 million. It doesn’t get much more Hollywood than that! It also made household names of its stars, Harry Reems and Linda Lovelace. If all this sounds familiar, it might be because this lighthearted take covers the same ground as the excellent 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat.

The first act of Sex Scandal shows how nice Jewish boy Reems (Malcolm Madera) ended up in this timeless classic with Lovelace (Lori Gardner), who is portrayed as a mousy wannabe manhandled by her husband/manager, Chuck Traynor (Zach Wegner), the stereotypical villain of the piece. Together they shoot Deep Throat on location in Florida with director Gerard Damiano (a straight hairdresser from Queens), and it opens to slow ticket sales in Times Square. But a publicity stunt involving obscenity charges causes it to be a crossover smash. The second act focuses on the trial of Reems and raises important questions of censorship and first-amendment rights. However, the gravitas of the subject matter doesn’t always jibe with the campiness of the presentation. Most of the characters feel like caricatures, and comical wigs, fake mustaches and overdone costumes don’t help to make them seem any more real. Madera holds his own as Reems (though for anyone who is familiar with the hirsute screen stud, his lack of chest hair is a casting oversight that is hard to forgive). Gardner plays Lovelace (who died in 2002) as a little girl lost, finally gaining some self-worth through sisterhood, but she’s not really the focus here. Reems and his eventual acquittal take up most of the time and energy.

Fortunately, Douglas brings his many years of experience to the project. At one point, he has a weary Damiano patiently sitting on-set “waiting for wood.” Douglas also makes good use of projected video images (one scene features a reenactment of an actual oral scene from the movie, which is shown in the background as the actors on-stage fake the action) and pretaped segments (GAYVN winner Preston Ridge pops up in a fun cameo as a newscaster). The uneven script works in references to Nixon and Watergate, and manages to capture the hippie atmosphere of the era that led to “porno chic,” but a far-fetched ending montage that somehow links recent mainstream entertainments (such as When Harry Met Sally) to Deep Throat feels forced, as does some of the acting. But this is an important subject for porn fans to know about, and even though it’s a somewhat frivolous take on a weighty topic, it brings a sense of good, clean fun to a history lesson that needs to be remembered and learned.

For more information, visit deepthroattheplay.com.

Actor Preston Ridge, director Jerry Douglas, playwright David Bertolino and
Broadway Beat host Richie Ridge at opening-night party.