27037582
Rob Becker, to use a ’90s clich�, is an enabler.
"Rob Becker’s Defending the Caveman" originated in 1991 in San Francisco and is still showing legs as it revisits Philadelphia at the Kimmel Center. It offers a unique, and at times worn-out, take on the war between the sexes that publishers and authors and talk show hosts have turned into a steady industry.
As a child, Becker watched boys playing "kill the guy with the ball" and girls playing house. That observation, along with what his program describes as a three-year-long "informal study of anthropology, prehistory, psychology, sociology and mythology, along with dramatic structure and playwriting," led him to the conclusion women gather, men hunt. His mission is to figure out why the two are so different. What he discovers is habits learned during prehistoric times have been carried – fast forward – to contemporary life. Women collect data, men focus; women cooperate, men negotiate; female best friends talk about their feelings, male best friends swear at each other.
The result is a work that floats somewhere between stand-up and theater, full of lines that make the audience howl, but also anchored by a character telling a story with a beginning, middle and end.
One might conclude the show is a good attempt at turning a single joke into a full evening of theater: Namely, men are swine and women are their sensitive, long-suffering truffles.
With little more than some home videos, a ratty-looking chair and a clunky TV that seems to have been plucked full form from a "Flintstones" cartoon, South Philadelphia native Vince Valentine keeps the audience chortling for nearly two hours.
None of this "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" stuff is new. But the entertainment value lies in Valentine’s winning personality and presentation.
Becker, a California native, was a college dropout who owned a sandwich shop franchise in Santa Rosa in the early 1980s. Realizing comedy was more fun than smearing mayonnaise on bread slices, he dumped his apron and tried his hand at San Francisco’s comedy clubs.
In illuminating the male-female relationships from the modern caveman’s point of view, "Defending the Caveman" is a smorgasbord of "compare and contrast" observational humor served up with the giggles, guffaws and belly laughs that characterize the perils and pitfalls of a modern-day man trying to survive in a relationship world where he is clearly out of his element.
I must confess to never having seen so many people laugh so uproariously at the obvious. Couples linked hands, nodded their heads in acknowledgment as if some deep truth had been revealed. and even those who might seem less easily satisfied conceded a few laughs.
In "Caveman," best friends who haven’t seen each other in a while, gal version: "You’re my oldest and closest friend." Best friends who haven’t seen each other in a while, guy style: "Still driving that piece of –?"
They mean, Becker patiently explains, exactly the same thing.
This may not be news to many people. Indeed, it’s not even accurate for many. Truth be told, there’s a lot in Becker’s monologue you have heard before, including that male drivers hate to pull over and ask for directions and the ’90s seem to have produced two sexes – women and jerks (a polite substitute for Becker’s adult language).
Mix and match, you’ve got problems. The solution? It takes a lot of male energy to have the strength to make yourself talk about your feelings when you really want to go to sleep. And it takes a lot of female energy to sit with a guy and watch TV and not say anything. In both cases, just do it.
When shopping, a woman asking her man if he thinks a sofa will look right in their living room is out of luck. He can’t imagine anything he can’t afford to buy, or, in Becker’s metaphorical parlance, "hunt."
"If I can’t kill it, I can’t imagine it," says Becker’s Caveman Everyman.
And this is supposed to be in his defense.
In the 1950s, Becker says, the ideal man was strong and silent and rode a horse. In the ’60s, he was strong and silent and rode a motorcycle. In the ’70s, he was Woody Allen ("Ohhhhh-kaaay! Now we all had a chance.") In the ’80s things began to get murky: The ideal was Don Johnson, who carried a gun, but wore pastel shirts. And in the ’90s, the ideal man was in the movies: "Ghost." ("The guy was dead! I guess that’s a fantasy for women: Someone who loves them, but leaves no hair in the tub.")
While there is much exploration of the differences between the sexes that may resonate with Becker’s audience, those who are not fans of put-down humor may grow weary of a one-joke evening. What he has are some funny bits, but they depend on the basic assumption that men are only slightly evolved Neanderthals, standing around slack-jawed, while women have always been highly verbal, sociable beings, able to concentrate on many things at once. It’s easy to make jokes when you start out with such a premise. But most men and women rarely fit into such handy stereotypical niches, except on sitcoms.
Valentine delivers Becker’s material deftly; he has a nice sense of timing and knows how to engage the audience seamlessly while smoothly keeping them captivated. He’s a master of hilarious body language and facial signals.
Rob Becker’s Defending the Caveman
Through Dec. 10
The Kimmel Center: Innovation Theater
Broad and Spruce streets
Tickets: $39-$45
215-731-3333
www.kimmelcenter.org/broadway
