Theater Reviews: Before I Forget, Lie With Me, Six Years

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The Painting

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• Naughty Nancy
• Anthony Neilson
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STITCHING Combine equal parts Harold Pinter, EC Comics and Al Goldstein, then shake — but not stir — till thoroughly black and blue, and you might approximate the acrid, psychosexually explicit minimalism on tap in Anthony Neilson’s bleak, 2002 relationship melodrama. Two narrative timelines trace the final, grueling chapters in the troubled marriage of 30-somethings Abby (Meital Dohan) and Stu (John Ventimiglia) when infidelity and an unplanned pregnancy transform a merely bad marriage into a nightmarishly sadomasochistic dance of death. Alternating between past and present, the narrative effectively juxtaposes the bickering couple’s fateful choice to remain together and have the baby with that decision’s grimly ironic aftermath — an unseen tragedy and the increasingly self-destructive and brutal role-playing sex games through which the couple attempts to expiate their guilt. Neilson, a graduate of Britain’s much-trumpeted “in-yer-face” playwriting school, injects the proceedings with enough graphic sex and violence (including a particularly grisly twist ending) to justify his alma mater’s transgressive reputation, but the intended shock effects quickly wear thin. Despite Dohan’s searing and soulful turn, Abby is too much of a cipher for Stu’s sexually degrading antics to signify as much more than phallocentric pornography. Director Timothy Haskell doesn’t mitigate matters by smothering the delicate rhythms of Neilson’s abstract text under an overblown, kitchen-sink mise en scene and interminably long scene changes. Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through April 5. (323) 962-7782. (Bill Raden)