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| Laura Campbell in THE SURRENDER. Photo by Paul Kolnik. |
Adapted by her for the stage from her book The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir, the
play The Surrender by Toni Bentley
is currently enjoying its American premiere at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre
Row on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan.
If the Marquis de Sade and The
Story of O are your cup of tea, this paean to the joys of sexual
submission, masochism and, especially, anal sex may be right up your
alley. Otherwise, you might just find it
more of a turn-off than a turn-on.
There is no denying that Ms Bentley is a highly talented,
courageous and eloquent writer and she is much to be admired for the work she
has created. Similarly, the star of the
play, Laura Campbell, displays considerable talent, courage and eloquence of
her own in her depiction of the playwright’s persona as she transitions from a
woman with quasi-nymphomaniacal tendencies into one obsessed with anal sex in
all its aspects: not only physical and emotional but bio-mechanical and spiritually
transendental as well. And so, given my
admiration for the work of both Ms Bentley and Ms Campbell, I can truly say
that I appreciated this play. But appreciation
isn’t enjoyment and, given the play’s
subject matter, I can’t really say that I enjoyed it.
The Surrender, in
its focus on anal sex, is presented as being a “sensual glimpse into a taboo
erotic experience” but that’s something of an overstatement. Anal intercourse hasn’t really qualified as
much of a taboo for quite some time. I
can recall that, as far back as the 1990s, those who saw themselves as the
sexual avant-garde were proclaiming that “anal is the new oral.” So much for the “taboo” aspect of this
supposed “taboo erotic experience.”
But if anal sex isn’t a “taboo” experience, is it at least
an “erotic” one? Well, for many I’m sure
it is - but you wouldn’t really know it from the way it’s presented here. To be sure, the play’s set, a “lush,
modern-day woman’s boudoir” has been designed to be “sexually suggestive” and
the very lovely Ms Campbell, decked out
in a black silk dressing down, garters, black stockings, and very high black
heels, certainly contributes to the play’s erotic allure. (Even more so as Ms Campbell’s gown opens as
she moves about, displaying her bare thighs and buttocks.) But as for the play’s anal sex aspects, not
so much.
One of the reasons for this is that Ms Bentley devotes
considerable verbiage to describing the biomechanical aspects of the human body
accommodating (or discouraging) anal intercourse – the digestive system,
peristaltic contractions, involuntary inner anal sphincter control, and
voluntary external anal sphincter control.
If you enjoy sexually fantasizing about your gynecologist or
proctologist, maybe it will work for you.
Otherwise, I doubt if you’ll find it even as erotic as watching Miley Cyrus
twerking.
What is most apparent to me is that Ms Bentley simply is not
comfortable in her own skin. She is a
mass of contradictions, does not know who she is or who she wants to be, and is
continually being torn between her plaintive desire to fit in and her urge to
prove just how different she is from everyone else. As a child, she was raised as an atheist in
the Bible Belt and assumed the persona of “an atheist who longs to
believe.” In subsequent years, she began
crossing herself before going onstage as a ballerina, not because the sign of
the cross had any meaning for her but because others did it and it seemed to
make them feel better. She collected
rosaries because she “figured that if they were old and French, they would be
suffused by the faith of previous believers and…some of their faith might rub
off on me.” For the remainder of her
life, she continued to search for God – albeit in the strangest of places!
Her feet didn’t hurt when she danced in her toe shoes but
pained her terribly when she removed them.
To her, “This paradoxical marriage of physical discomfort and euphoria
was my first taste of transcendence.” Apparently
concurrently, she began to identify with the Catholic saints and “honed in on
the women who starved, who bled, who beat themselves with birch branches, who
woke up screaming in the middle of the night pierced by God’s love.” We’re witnessing the birth of a true
masochist.
When she took to spending innumerable hours before the
mirror, she saw herself becoming both subject and object and denied that her
behavior was narcissistic. Indeed,
eventually her mirror image was more real to her than she was to herself or, as
she put it: “I relinquished my entire perception of myself to my reflection….I
existed solely in the mirror….”
But it is not just Ms Bentley’s masochistic tendencies and
lack of a sense of self that are so striking, she also holds to several ideas
that are so much at variance with conventional thinking that they are, indeed,
to be marveled at. In an age in which
“equality” – social, sexual, economic, you
name it – is generally looked upon favorably, she is glad to proclaim
just the opposite. As she sees it,
“Equality negates progress, prevents action.
But a top and a bottom, well, they can get to the moon and back before
equals can negotiate who pays, who gets laid, and who gets the blame.”
Similarly, unlike most of us, for whom “love” is one of our
species’ highest and most desirable ideals and “lust” is little more than an
animal instinct, Ms Bentley has it the other way around, proclaiming that “I trust lust more than love.”
Little wonder that she gets the sex act ass-backwards too.
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