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Confronting the eternal male question

Bobby, a character very like Robert Dubac portrayed by Robert Dubac in his one-person show The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? , has been dumped by his girl, and he doesn't know why.

Sure, the thing that brought matters to a head was his refusal to let her cat, which he doesn't like, sleep in their bed, and her subsequent conclusion that if he doesn't want to sleep with her cat then he doesn't want to sleep with her. But Bobby is probing beyond this baffling exercise of feminine logic in order o ask the eternal male question: What do women want?

Answering it, which entails examining how men and women are different, is the substance of Dubac's appearance at the Merriam Theater. In the end he seems — at least in the opinion of another guy — to do a pretty good job of reaching a reasonable conclusion. But that's not really Dubac's goal. His purpose is to make the process funny and entertaining, and his sharply written, nicely put together, skillfully presented show certainly is that.

He is, of course, covering much traveled ground. The "question" and its ramification have forever been the substance of much man-to-man (and man-to-woman) conversation. It is the subject, as Dubac humorously demonstrates in the show, of many self-help books. Robert Dubac is a keen observer of, as he puts it, the "equal but equally different" worlds of women and men. He has a lot to say that, if not new, is refreshingly and comically stated, and he has no trouble keeping it up for a quite diverting 90 minutes.

To search for answer to his question, Bobby goes inside his own head (much of the time a beer in hand), where he spends his time passing between the male, or right side, of his brain — depicted as a slovenly room strewn with discarded clothes and empty bottles — and the right, or female side, which consists primarily of a large, empty blackboard on which Bobby writes words such as honesty, passion and commitment. He reaches his conclusions by talking out his relationship with his lost girlfriend, which Dubac maintains as an effective through-line for the piece. He also bounces observations off the audience, with whom he establishes a comfortable rapport, and gets advice from five male chauvinists of his acquaintance, including a retired Army colonel, a passionate Lothario, and a cynical geezer.

The show, with its barrage of one-liners; often has a feel of a nightclub routine. Dubac has done stand up comedy, but he is also an actor, and his portrayals of Bobby's friends — though a couple of them are tedious company — and Bobby himself are adeptly conceived and presented.

Dubac isn't out to bash men or women. He zings both equally and without hostility. It's true that women may wince over a line such as "Honesty is the most important thing to a woman — unless you're telling the truth about her," but more frequently he is less pointed, presenting something both sexes can laugh at. " To a woman, efficiency is a small apartment; to a man it's drinking beer and using the urinal at the same time."

Like Defending the Caveman, this is a show to attend with a significant other. The woman in front of me kept turning to give a knowing look to her seat mate as Dubac's keen commentary struck home.

I attend alone. But when Dubac observed that women's memories are acute, while men's are conveniently faulty ("You can remember [stuff] we did three years ago. We can't even remember f it's true"), I know that had my spouse been there, I would gotten a very knowing look and smile.

- Douglas J. Keating

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | 2000 | Review Index