Dirty Books

by Tom Storch

When you walk into Dirty Books, writer and director Mara Lieberman’s immersive theater experience now playing through June 27^th at the Bated Breath Theater, it feels like you’re entering a museum exhibit. In a narrow room with white walls and fluorescent lights, you see displays of banned books, plaques that commemorate a timeline of censorship in this country and a few interactive prompts. One asks you to write a letter to your favorite banned author. In the corner stands someone who looks like a guide. She soon asks the audience to watch a slide show about the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

However, at this moment, Dirty Books pivots. The guide, who now turns into a character named the Warden, accuses one of the guests of stealing from the exhibit. This guest—of course an actor—claims that she’s merely taking a book that she wrote herself. From there, the play proceeds to tell us this woman’s story, how she married a clueless man who wrote pulpy erotic fiction and of her affair with the wife of her husband’s co-worker.

The story itself is nothing that interesting, but what’s novel here is the approach. For not only is this show interlaced with frequent historical asides, but it also incorporates heavy doses of improv. None of the characters have set names, instead they change each night as supplied by the audience, along with some other inconsequential information. Also, those writing prompts from earlier get read and some rotary telephones have been placed in ottomans (spoiler!) Furthermore, this show is never content to play any scene straight and loves symbols and metaphors.

It’s an ambitious project and honestly the first half somewhat mystified me. What does improv have to do with Comstock laws? How do of either of those relate to this story? It all felt shoehorned together, but by the end I came to mostly appreciate it. First off, the actors are doing wonders pulling the show together, remembering bits and supplying their characters with personality. I also enjoyed some of the physical choreography and found its use of food captivating and thought provoking. Sometimes the improv even worked. During the telephone scene, one person in my audience opened up about having never been in love.

But a lot of times, the improv felt distracting. Inevitably, one or two audience members will try to grab the spotlight. And while Dirty Books makes fairly clear the connection between the plot and the history of censorship, its thesis still feels fuzzy. I found the final note it ends on particularly baffling.

Yet, all and all, it’s fun enough and at the end you get a cookie.

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written and directed by Mara Lieberman

Cast: Alaina Bozarth, Elisa Grace Davis, Claire Hampsey, Alexis Pratt, Sammy Rivas, Laura Walter, Grayson Willenbacher, Camilo Zuqui