Before we can even begin discussing “Intimacy” and what it means, be forewarned: If the theater had ratings, as movies do, this show would earn an X.
It features full-frontal nudity, hard-core videos and graphic sex scenes in which the actors use highly realistic-looking prosthetics — though an erection at a recent performance seemed pretty darn real.
But the matter-of-fact tone of Thomas Bradshaw’s new play — a comedy, as it happens — is even more unsettling, as the characters calmly discuss the most outrageous things.
When 18-year-old Janet (Ella Dershowitz, daughter of legal eagle Alan) tells her parents that she wants to perform in porn videos, her mother, Pat (Laura Esterman), doesn’t flinch.
But Janet’s father, Jerry (Keith Randolph Smith), does.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit hypocritical of you to condemn our daughter for doing something you enjoy so much?” Pat asks him. “She’s like a diplomat, or a philanthropist. Well, a movie star is what she really is.”
That’s one of the more mundane bits in the show, whose take on middle-class life is like a sexplicit combo of “The Ice Storm,” “Married . . . With Children” and “Leave It to Beaver.”
Bradshaw’s made a name for himself with a series of button-pushing plays, such as 2012’s “Burning,” which featured lengthy bouts of anal sex. Also Nazis, because what’s provocation without Nazis?
But “Intimacy,” directed by Scott Elliott for the New Group, goes even further in its juxtaposition of banality and outrage.
Set in a nondescript suburb, the play centers on three families, each one with a high schooler in its midst. After a few near-farcical developments, they eventually all join forces to make an amateur porn feature. The movie’s the dream project of teenage aspiring director Matthew (Austin Cauldwell), and stars his own widowed father, James (Daniel Gerroll), and Janet.
The single most disturbing scene — even more outré than a gushing (cleverly faked) ejaculation that startles the front row — involves Jerry and his daughter. Bradshaw lets us stew in discomfort before revealing it’s Jerry’s fantasy. Which is still bad, just a teeny-tiny bit less so.
Through it all you can’t accuse the show of being boring, and it always engages our attention — if only to make us wonder what insanity Bradshaw will come up with next.
Yet as graphic as things can be, Bradshaw’s intentions are less than clear.
Perversely, you could say “Intimacy” targets permissiveness. It’s as if it were saying: “This is what happens when everything’s allowed — happy now?”
The irony is that the conservative audience that may nod in agreement is unlikely to make it through the show.