…Where You Eat
by Dennis Bush
The Wild Project, 195 East 3rd Street

Reviewed by Robert Viagas

Dennis Bush’s smart, episodic comedy, …Where You Eat, dishes up a La Ronde for the 21^st century: a series of interlocked PG-13-rated dispatches from today’s sexual battlefields.

If the capable eight-member ensemble of boasts a star, it’s Kelsey Torstveit, playing an exuberant free spirit named Meredith. She answers an online ad from a young gay man (Scot [CQ] Taylor) who is curious to observe female genitalia up close, to find out what all the fuss is about. Their witty and unexpectedly sweet meeting launches the merry-go-round of encounters among a group of Manhattan singles and semi-singles who are connected through a tangled org-chart of friendships, jobs, internet dates, and shared gym memberships.

The playlets include a gay couple trying to turn a one-night stand into a relationship, a straight man who refuses to wear women’s deodorant, another straight man who works in a gay bar, and a woman who names her dildoes, plus many more. They utter memorable quotes about “fetishes versus fetishes that require dry-cleaning,” the ineffable sadness of “toilet sounds,” and the proven unreliability of “promises made in the afterglow.”

Their encounters are presented in a series of sharp, crisp, mainly comic scenes—few last longer than three minutes or so—through several of them end in a strangely flatfooted way, as if a page of the script was lost. Some just trail off. It’s also an exclusively Caucasian sexual world.

Director Meggy Lykins keeps the staccato pacing moving, and highlights the talented cast that also includes Veronica Thompson, John DiMino, Melissa Teitel, Chapman Hyatt, Chrizney [CQ] Roth and Dan Foster.

Author Bush is known as author of Mouthy Bitch, and the solo-actor play (Mary)Todd.

…Where You Eat, which includes a brief glimpse of bare male buttocks, is being presented as part of the Fresh Fruit Festival at The Wild Project, the Off-Off Broadway theatre in Alphabet City.