Red Light Winter
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It’s the play Adam Rapp should have written instead of Red Light Winter. What’s necessary to a plot is there: a concise action with powerful consequences. It’s the kind of play often found on American stages a half century ago but seldom written now. It’s a play that shows how people react to pivotal, irrevocable moments. A play, in short, that matters. Despite the hype and heat surrounding Rapp, what happens in Red Light Winter doesn’t matter except to his three desperate, overly theatrical characters: the skittish Matt; his ambitious best friend, Davis; and long-suffering prostitute Christina.
Instead of crucial events and subtle characterizations, Rapp comes up with convenient personal oddities that are more often displayed than dramatized. It seems Matt was so traumatized by a girlfriend who dumped him three and a half years earlier that he’s still prone to sudden bouts of sobbing–and hasn’t been with a woman since. While he and Davis are visiting Amsterdam, Davis brings Christina to Matt’s hotel room hoping a quick lay will help. But Matt’s lost all confidence and can barely look at her. Christina has been treated as property for so long–she was even paid to marry her husband, a closeted gay French lawyer–that she becomes infatuated with the married Davis, who poses as a sensitive guy while giving her a test drive before handing her over to Matt. After Matt makes small talk with her for a good 45 minutes (Christina must be the only Amsterdam hooker who doesn’t watch the clock), he fucks her for all of 12 seconds, then becomes hopelessly obsessed with her.
