Customer Reviews

The Leisure Society

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Peter and Mary are avid consumers, their combined incomes and rising debts affording them an elegant home, baby son and the potential adoption of a Chinese orphan, the required status symbols of a self-indulgent class. Their problems are overwhelming, if vapid, escalating financial worries, a constantly crying infant, a deteriorating relationship with a recently divorced fried, Mark, and whether to quit smoking. From the opening act, it is clear that this couple, while outwardly united, pursues separate emotional paths, stunningly self-centered, defined by their infantile needs and shallow opinions gleaned from society's expectations rather than any meaningful connection to the world at large: "We have some friends who lost their house. That got us in touch with poverty."

Questioned about their desire to adopt a Chinese girl, the answer is equally ludicrous: "I guess we think they're kind of cute." Peter and Mary enable each other's weaknesses, contributing to the flawed structure of their union. A dinner has been arranged as an excuse to inform Mark they don't want him for a friend anymore, but when he arrives, Mark is accompanied by a "special friend", the twenty-one year old Paula, a frequent, but uncommitted sexual partner. The plan goes early awry in a confusion of intimate confessions and a growing sexual tension, Peter and Mary jockeying for emotional dominance of a situation that will leave one of them, the weaker, on the sidelines. As the evening continues, Peter, Mary and Mark reveal themselves as callous opportunists, too immature for the parenthood they readily endorse. Even Paula is devoid of innocence, already corrupted by the casual physicality of her lifestyle: "I've only been drinking to get drunk for two or three years."

The concluding act brings Peter and Mary full circle, caught in a trap of their own making, their small rebellions reduced to bleats of discontent, more encumbered than when they began, precariously propped up by expediency and ill-prepared to meet the future. In a gathering fueled by alcohol and an increasing lack of inhibitions, The Leisure Society is a scathing indictment of Western society, instant gratification and the rampant consumerism that obliterates the human face of a generation driven to acquire while emoting a crackling dissatisfaction with life as they know it. Luan Gaines/ 2006.