James Wilson takes a look at Mankind:
Robert O'Hara's Mankind, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, begins with a bang. After a night of lovemaking, Jason (Bobby Moreno) reluctantly tells his noncommittal sex buddy Mark (Anson Mount), "Dude, I'm pregnant." Mark doesn't need any time to contemplate the couple's options. He instinctively responds: "Dude, get rid of it." Set in a presumably not-so distant future in which women have become extinct, the play's very funny, very human opening is unfortunately quickly subsumed by a host of big ideas and controversial social issues. By my observation the playwright takes satirical aim at male-male relationships, expressions of gender, climate change, the limits of patriarchy, the emergence of a fascist State, and most prominently, the destructiveness and hypocrisy of organized religion. It all feels scattershot, and as a result, Mankind is as frustrating as it is enervating. . . . |
