«  Back To Reviews Index

Robert Dubac has hit the theatrical jackpot in Denver. His one-man tour de force The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron had sold out runs at the Vogue Theatre and Chicken Lips Comedy Theatre, and has now moved into the Denver Performing Arts Complex. It's the local equivalent of a New York production opening in the East Village and ending up a Broadway hit.

The play is very much a male version of Lily Tomlin's hit The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe. The two shows both grew out of material and characters developed in stand-up comedy routines; they both depend on solo actors displaying dazzling quick-change characterizations; and both have a sense of optimism in the face of life¹s baffling mysteries.

Dubac's show is likely to hold up better than Tomlin's,
though. Where Tomlin and her collaborator Jane Wagner explored the political side of life in the post-counterculture '70s, Dubac takes on a more universal question: What do women want?

Sophocles first tackled this question in Antigone and every major western playwright since has given it a shot. Dubac's beautifully structured, unflaggingly intelligent script contains plenty of echoes from past writers, but none overshadow his own voice, which is original and refreshing,.

The central character in the piece is Bobby, Dubac's
alter-ego. Bobby's girlfriend has left him, at least temporarily and he's working on figuring out the psychosexual dynamics of relationships ­ with little success.

One problem is that Bobby's been mentored by an insanegroup of chauvinists each a brilliantly realized archetype, We meet, for instance, Jean-Michel, an existential fatalist; The Colonel, a husband father and terminal misogynist; and Fast Eddie, whose fear of women causes him to treat them like doormats. These characters appear and disappear in seamless inserts into Bobby's increasingly confused musing on the opposite sex.

This is a show that will make you laugh helplessly, leave you feeling great, and cause no mental aftershocks, In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a hit.

- Alan Dumas

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS | June, 28 1996 | Review Index