Rossellini Explains Birds and Bees With Clever ‘Green Porno’ (4.5 Stars)
Green Porno, Live on Stage – Written by Isabella Rossellini and Jean-Claude Carriere; Artistic Guidance, Muriel Mayette; Lights and Video, Antoine Manichon. Presented by ArtsEmerson and World Music/CRASHarts at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Boston. Final Performance February 21st.
While the title of Isabella Rossellini’s charming and often hilarious one woman show, ‘Green Porno, Live on Stage’ may sound a little racy for the theater (although the Cutler Majestic is located in the old Combat Zone), don’t let it fool you. Granted, there’s plenty of sex in this show, but it’s not likely to offend anyone, and only those whose sexual taste veers toward the zoological (and incredibly bizarre) will find it even remotely titillating. So if you’re looking for real porn, that’s what the internet is for, but if you’re looking for a really fun night out (despite the cold and snow) where you might even learn a thing or two from actress/model turned biology lecturer Rossellini, you may still be able to score tickets for next Saturday’s show at the beautifully restored Cutler Majestic Theatre.
“Tonight we’re going to talk about sex,” she says as she opens the show, sharing the stage with only a lectern and a large video screen behind her. “Is it erotic? I don’t know, because I don’t know your taste.” Despite the tease, this production really is more scholarly than theatrical, but there’s nothing dry about any of it, and in fact it’s closer to a comedy show than a lecture. Following the seductive opening, she launches into very funny and informative segments about the reproductive lives of various land and marine animals from primates to calamari (cuttlefish), using simple props and short films to give us an up close and personal view of how the animal kingdom keeps its species going.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some bits that would send pre-pubescent boys (okay, me) into guilty peals of laughter, namely the discussion of the largest penis in the animal kingdom (the Blue Whale, clocking in at over eight feet) that leads to the far more interesting identity of the creature with the largest equipment comparative to his size. That honor goes to the barnacle, whose penis is 40 times larger than the rest of his body, which he uses to track down females to inseminate across great distances (which Rossellini does a very funny riff on). She also scores huge laughs with an otherwise sad piece of information about hamsters devouring their young, but explains it all away in a very loving persona – dressed as a hamster.
There are other bits that are both educational and funny, including segments on a type of spider whose young devour the mothers soon after birth, and end/beginning life of salmon, whose final act of life (after swimming upstream) is to reproduce. Some of the material may be familiar to fans of the Sundance Channel, for whom Rossellini produced three short comedic films on reproduction, courtship and motherhood. Rossellini teamed with French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire), to produce this theatrical piece and the results are terrific. The show was originally scheduled to run Feb. 13-15, but due to the storm, there will an additional show on Saturday, Feb. 21st. For more info, go to: https://artsemerson.org/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=green_porno