Noam Osband on David Robson

David,

Tarana Burke coined the phrase “Me Too” in 2006, and it’s been nearly a decade since the MeToo movement became a national phenomenon. In that time, so many of us have been forced to confront the entrenchment of misogyny, the way its perpetrators so infrequently face consequences, and the impact on the untold numbers of their victims.

What I loved about “Without Consent,” is the way it forced me to think about a different facet of this story, the family members whose lives are devastated by sexual violence, the relatives of the offenders and the victims. At the beginning of this drama, we meet Judith, the wife of a very successful entertainment magnate named Victor, someone who’s career and home location immediately makes one think of Bill Cosby. We watch as she conducts a job interview with Lisa, an older woman applying to be a caregiver for Judith’s dementia-stricken husband. As the play progresses, it becomes clear that both women are withholding information from the other and that each is intimately aware of Victor’s crimes, one as an aggrieved wife who has tolerated this abuse for decades and the other a grieving mother reckoning with the impact of Victor’s violence on her daughter.

What the play really highlights is the widening impact of sexual violence on all of those around them and how it forces difficult decisions on people peripheral to the act. Lisa knows that the life of luxury she lives is dependent on her complicity and willingness to ignore decades of infidelity and sexual violence. While it is easy to condemn Lisa for refusing to act, the play highlights her own helplessness and the ways in which she too is constrained by the power of an immensely wealthy and successful man. Similarly, Judith eventually reveals that she told her daughter, Petra, not to tell the police about what she suffered, an action that leads to unimaginable consequences. And yet, in a world where Bill Cosby had his own conviction overturned on a technicality, can we blame a mother for warning her daughter that talking to the police might ruin her life?

I am loath to reveal too much of the plot because part of what I enjoyed about this show is the cat and mouse game between the protoagonists, how each is interested in the other for their own nefarious reasons. I especially liked the slow reveal of information, leaving the audience aware a shoe or two would eventually drop but unsure how. The constant twists and reversals in the play gave it a propulsivity that isn’t always there in a two person play that takes place in real time. I left the theater thinking in new ways about what is a sadly age-old topic, and I appreciated the way your play offered a fresh perspective on a topic so many of us have been forced to confront in new ways in recent years.

With admiration for taking on such a thorny subject,

Noam

David Robson is the Playwright of Without Consent.

Noam Osband is the Writer/Performer of Wikipedilove.