Theatre in Review: Consent (Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre)Gay men, here's a tip: That cute kid half your age on the subway platform, staring at you, rubbing his crotch, might be all right for a one-night stand, but he's going to be trouble in the long run. This will be news only to the most naïve among us, a group that includes Ron, the protagonist of Consent, an equally steamy and silly drama about one man's midlife sexual awakening. This sort of borderline soft-core material, which entails getting inside the main character's head, is probably best handled in prose. The theatre -- at least in the format of a conventional naturalistic two-act drama, isn't ideal for treating such private experiences. In any case, Consent has a glossy, genre-fiction patina that suggests that its author, David Rhodes, is mostly interested in providing a titillating good time for a target audience of gay males. As heroes go, Ron has quite a résumé: He's a former pro football star, made independently wealthy thanks to some shrewd investments. (He is flush enough to pay his ex-wife $10,000 in monthly alimony, with little sign of stress.) He is also a star architect, whose latest project is featured in Architectural Digest. This is the most unlikely collection of accomplishments since Joan Crawford played a wealthy heiress who is also a hit Broadway playwright in the 1952 thriller Sudden Fear (a film that similarly advises against running off too rashly with a cute young thing). Ron has recently left Susie, his wife of at least a quarter century and the mother of his children, in order to begin sleeping with men. Note that I didn't say that Ron has come out of the closet. The signs are everywhere that he isn't yet entirely comfortable with his new life. This is made glaringly obvious after his first night with Kurt, the looker from the subway platform. Kurt is rich, attractive, and bored -- with money, with law school, and especially with New Haven. (In practically his first line, he complains that there isn't one decent sexual top to be found there, a comment that won't make him popular at the Yale Pride Ball.) Kurt is a nonstop talker -- his favorite topic is sex, naturally -- and he also enjoys probing into Ron's past, an activity that leaves Ron rather too noticeably on edge. Kurt is something of a professional provocateur, in part because it riles Ron, who then takes a dominant role in their sexual encounters. Then again, Kurt has a taste for all kinds of role play -- including spanking and father-son fantasies -- which frighten rather than arouse Ron. One night, Kurt turns the tables, wrapping a belt around Ron's neck and raping him -- except, as Ron reluctantly admits the following morning, it probably isn't rape if he enjoyed it. Lest you think Consent is little more than Fifty Shades of Grey, Lavender Edition, I hasten to add that it is really about Ron's confused, halting search for an authentic relationship, a tall order given the fact that Kurt, a specialist in games, fantasies, and acting out, is practically a different person each time he shows up. The course of love is not smoothed by the appearance of a sex tape made by Kurt without Ron's approval. An odd hybrid of comedy and psychological thriller, spiked with some of the most graphic man-on-man sex scenes currently on offer, Consent never really decides if Ron is taking a potentially destructive walk on the wild side or merely waking up to what he really enjoys in bed. The action is marred by a certain falsity throughout, especially as it rushes toward the less-than-surprising conclusion that a romantic relationship is necessarily about more than sex, no matter how exotic. It is probably best enjoyed by audiences who relish watching two handsome, and often barely clad, men alternately trading kisses and body blows. Under the author's direction, Mark McCullough Thomas works hard, sometimes successfully, at making Ron into a likable, and convincingly conflicted, guy -- which isn't easy, especially when he goes into a tailspin over Kurt, lying around in his bathrobe and drinking vodka. (For such a successful architect, he never seems to go to the office.) Thomas displays strong chemistry with Michael Goldstein's Kurt, even if the latter can't do much about his character's more grating qualities. (Really, if Ron thinks he is ever going to have adult conversation with this brat, he really is in need of professional help.) Angela Pierce struggles with the role of Susie, who refuses to accept that Ron has moved on, and constantly shows up to lecture him about his responsibilities. (In the play's most ridiculous scene, Susie shows up with the divorce papers, but Ron has forgotten to get a notary public. Kurt, who interns in a law firm, shows up out of the blue, and he just happens to have the necessary seal in his knapsack. He stamps the document, rattling Ron and Susie both with sexual innuendoes.) Catherine Curtin is a welcome face as Ron's sister, who has a full load of real-life troubles -- single motherhood, a deadbeat ex-husband -- and who is appalled at the problems Ron invents for himself. Given the dank, underground Black Box Theatre and a necessarily limited budget, the set designer, Scott Tedmon-Jones, does a pretty good job of creating a chic Manhattan loft. John Eckert's lighting includes some fast-moving color chases to spice up the scene changes. Izzy Fields' costumes are heavy on the trendy underwear, but she also gives each character a distinct, and distinctly appropriate, look. Chad Raines' sound design blends some smooth soul selections with EDM and street sounds, all to good effect. That Consent is being produced during Gay Pride Month, a time when the city is flooded with gay tourists, is surely not an accident. I have heard anecdotal accounts of prudish audience members walking out in disgust, but really, what were they thinking in the first place? If you need to have your homoerotica dressed up a bit with plot and characters, this is the show for you. -- David Barbour 
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