Mike Leigh's "Goosepimples"

After seeing "Goose-Pimples" at NYC's INTAR theater, I finally understand what makes a Mike Leigh play or movie tick. He uses Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as a model, but makes an important adjustment: there is no catharsis at the conclusion. With Albee, you get several hours of acrimony that produce fifteen minutes of climactic self-awareness and reconciliation. With Leigh, there's acrimony until the curtain drops on the cast and you suspect even after the curtain falls. The calm at the end of the play is because the characters are too exhausted to continue. Except for his recent "Secrets and Lies", we understand that after a good night's sleep his characters will make the same blind and foolish mistakes the next day and for the rest of their lives. What drives Leigh to these bleak conclusions is a belief that there is no possibility of personal growth in a society driven by the profit motive.

In the first act of "Goose-Pimples", we meet Irving (Max Baker) and his room-mate Jackie (Caroline Seymour). He sells cars and she is a croupier. While the conversation reveals two characters who are obsessed with upward mobility, neither has the means to rent or own their own dwelling. Economic frustration and envy is the theme of this black comedy, set in 1981 in Dollis Hill, a London suburb.

After Jackie goes off to work, Irving is joined by dinner guests Vernon (Sam Rockwell), who sells cars with Irving, and his wife Frankie (Gillian Foss). Sipping wine and munching on snack food, they discuss the difficulties they face trying to sell English cars. They blame the labor unions on the poor quality of the cars, but console each other with the knowledge that at least the cars are "hand made." The only other subject that interests the two men is sex, which is always a matter of smutty, locker-room innuendoes rather than frank, sophisticated adult conversation. Irving is supposed to be some kind of stud and to drive that point home, he plays Rod Stewart's "Do You Think I'm Sexy" nonstop on his stereo during the entire first act.

Frankie, like the members of the audience, sits there with a pained expression on her face while the two men guffaw at each other's juvenile tits-and-ass humor. Meanwhile, the only subject that interests her is whether Irving's trappings of success rate higher than her husband's. She tells Irving that his place is a bit on the small size and that the hallway has a peculiar odor. That odor, Irving tells her, comes from the powerful disinfectant used by building management to make sure that everything remains hygienic. That's the way the all the tip-top buildings are kept.

These unpleasant, grubbing characters have absolutely no redeeming features. Leigh confronts our aesthetic sensibilities by saying, in effect, that he is giving you exactly what society turns out. Most artists try to transform the mundane into something sublime. Leigh will have nothing of this. What keeps you riveted to the action of his plays or movies is the certain knowledge that sooner or later these characters will be at each other's throats. Then the pleasure becomes something akin to watching a traffic accident.

In the second act, Frankie returns to the apartment with Mohammed (Adam Alexi-Malle), a Saudi Arabian businessman whom she has met at work and who speaks hardly any English at all. (Irving, Vernon and Jackie have gone out for dinner because the steaks that Irving bought turn out to be spoiled. Jackie gets in a dig that all the "better" meat is sold at the butcher shop. What did he expect shopping with the proles?)

Frankie views Mohammed as a symbol of wealth and power. She is not exactly sure what he has in mind now that the two are together alone, but sex is not on her mind. His overweight, homely, balding appearance is in vivid contrast to her own blond, svelte good looks. He is under the impression that he has come there for sex, but doesn't know enough English to even ask her how much it costs. He keeps waving money in her face and she keeps pushing it away, saying "What's that for now? Go on with ya'" in a working-class accent. She probably doesn't even know herself why she has invited the Saudi home with her, except to bask in what she sees as his wealth and success. Attempts at conversation lead nowhere. When she holds up her drink and offers "Cheers", he pats the furniture and says, "Chairs...yes, of course."

When Irving, Vernon and Jackie return, the play goes into high gear. The living room becomes a battlefield as four of the five cast members--the English contingent--drink themselves into a rage, first at the Arab and then at themselves. Mohammed drinks along with them, but is blithely insensitive to the mounting tension. The two men race bait the Arab who understands not a word. The more he misunderstands them, the deeper grows their rage. The two women begin to quarrel with each other as well. They vie for the attention of the powerful and wealthy Arab, but he regards them as nothing but prostitutes. He keeps thrusting money at them which they eventually begin to stick it in their purses. Interpreting this as a signal to begin sex, he haughtily instructs the men, "You go now" while pawing at the women. His sexual advances to the women and his cavalier treatment of the two men finally brings the play to a boiling conclusion. As Mohammed throws one of the women over his shoulders, like a caveman hauling a conquest home, the two men throw him to the floor and beat and kick him. In their drunken stupor, most of the blows seems to have no effect. Mohammed falls asleep on the living-room floor and begins to snore loudly. Thus ends the comedy.

"Goose-Pimples" is not for everybody's taste. For the Mike Leigh fan, it is a must. It is a production of the Group Theater, which staged Leigh's "Ecstasy" to critical acclaim in 1995. The director is Scott Elliot, and Kevin Price's set and Tom Cochan's original music are first-rate. Performances are uniformly excellent, most especially Alexi-Malle's who was the subject of a lengthy NY Times profile. It noted that he was extraordinarily capable of expressing a wide range of emotions despite the fact that his character was not allowed to speak English. For ticket information, call 212-279-4200.

Louis Proyect