Fringe 2015 Review: “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll”

“I have no guilt, because I’m not a human being. I’m a dog,” playwright Eric Bogosian wrote in his stinging one-man takedown of lacquered late-’80s groupthink in his 1990 play Sex Drugs Rock & Roll. But in this iteration, one helmed by Kangagirl Productions and starring longtime local stage phenomenon David Lee – seriously, people still get angry inches at his Hedwig – that proposed absence of humanity couldn’t be more distant from the truth.

Even at its outset a quarter-century ago, the off-Broadway play cast Bogosian (or he cast himself, rather) as the outsider with the insider’s mind, but still, watching Lee unravel and tighten throughout a series of monologues on a sparse set was almost more human than humanity itself.

Sure, it’s the dark stuff, the grumbles into the radio mic and the floor-crouched philosophy of the armchair philosopher – Bogosian intended it to be so, cloaking the play in the myth of sex, drugs and rock & roll and all of the joy that implies, and layering it with AIDS and abuse – but, as has become the norm with Lee’s thespian bloodletting, the dynamics are huge, the smiles spare, the truths loud and the meaning clear. Wear black.

Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll
Eric Bogosian, David Lee
Venue: Pink
Length: 75 minutes
Rating: 13 and up
Price: $11

This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.