Cuttings
Cuttings is the story of Paul Benning and Gregory Keller, two souls twisted and scarred by pedophilia and incest. Paul is a former clinical psychologist who fondled his male clients, all of them boys. He finally confessed to one boy’s mother, did jail time, was stripped of his license, and is now a registered sex offender. He knows what he did, and is still doing is wrong, but cannot stop himself and refuses to submit to being judged by others. He is working as a bartender and still cruising for young men, having worked his way up to older adolescents.
Paul is also a hurting individual, psychologically and physically since he indulges in “cutting”, a process of cutting the skin. It is a practice associated with people who are suffering from emotional trauma and express their pain this way. When he takes off his shirt we see a chest and arms riddled with the scars of past encounters with the razor. Paul calls it “a game” and “prayers.” It is his alternative to illicit sex with boys. He sees Gregory as an opportunity for redemption from his unnatural desires, hoping that Gregory will come to love him and eventually have consensual sex with him. Until then, he will keep on doing the cutting as an alternative, only now it is Gregory wielding the razor.
Gregory is a teenage runaway from rural Indiana. He is a smart mouthed kid whose bravado is certain to get him in trouble or killed on the mean streets of the city. Science fiction and fantasy are his refuge from reality, for he is running from demons of his own. His feelings about Paul are a mixture of suspicion, fear, admiration and disgust. He wants to trust again, but believes that no one can be trusted, including Paul.
The two meet on a Chicago street corner and wind up in Paul’s apartment. They have to leave when Paul suspects that the police have learned that Gregory is living with him and may show up to arrest him (Paul). They decide to go to Cape Canaveral for the shuttle launch and take a side trip to Indiana where we meet Mrs. Keller and learn the truth about Gregory. Along the way we watch the two bicker and fight, alternately threatening each other, but ultimately dependent on each other. It is a descent into darkness, despite all claims to the contrary by the characters, especially Paul.
Throughout the play Paul’s training as a clinical psychologist keeps coming to the fore, and he uses it to his advantage. Shouting matches usually result in an emotional breakdown by Gregory, who is then soothed by a suddenly compassionate Paul. Gregory is not a slacker though, as he bites back verbally, occasionally surprising his mentor. Paul cajoles Mrs. Keller, an otherwise sharp cookie where her son is concerned, into the very act that caused Gregory to run away. But Paul is blind to the impact of what he is doing, which he does not discover until the play’s climax at the end. His expectation of joyful sex with Gregory is shattered by Gregory’s announcement that he wants to know how it feels to cut yourself. The look of shock and horror on Paul’s face is priceless.
About the play
Anyone familiar with incest and pedophilia will recognize the mind games being played by Paul on Gregory, and again on Mrs. Keller. They will also recognize Gregory’s description of his encounters with his mother in her makeshift mud bath. The entire play is a dance between emotionally crippled characters that are searching for trust and love, and ultimately unable to engage in mature relationships.
Ron Wells, who plays Paul, paints a leering, arrogant, smart, delusional, predatory, and sometimes compassionate individual, whose sexual desires are apparently unstoppable. He is as desperate as the runaway he shelters, and determined to do whatever it takes to keep Gregory. He smoothly seduces Mrs. Keller into taking a concrete step to convince her son that she loves him. It is an act of despicable cunning on Paul’s part. His delusion is all encompassing, a fact that even he doesn’t realize until the climax.
Geoff Rice, who plays Gregory, gives us a brat whose vocabulary is marked by liberal use of the word ‘fuck’. His only redeeming feature is his wide-eyed excitement about science fiction, and science. Gregory needs a father figure and mentor. His decision to stay with Paul is mostly a pragmatic one as he comes to terms with the reality of staying on the street, and the realization that he cannot go home. Watching him caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, you recognize that he may be irretrievably lost. At the play’s climax you conclude that he is indeed lost, a painful moment for the audience.
Wendye Clarendon, as Mrs. Keller, is a rural mother full of homespun corniness. How else to explain the arrival of the “tea train,” followed by the dinner announcement, “all aboard the HMS Supper!” Her basic instinct that Paul is not all he seems appears to be the start of his undoing, but he is too smooth an operator and she is also a hurting soul. Her husband, allegedly on long trips to China, is actually vegetating at a medical center, the result of a failed attempt to beat a freight train to the crossing while traveling with his girlfriend. Her love for her son is a substitute for what should be her love for her husband. She is as deluded as Paul, and easily convinced that she should do what is right, although she never names the ‘what’ and Paul never pulls it out of her. The audience can, and does, figure it out.
This play flirts with melodramatic acting all through its two hour running time. Ron Wells manages to not go over the top with his character, becoming instead a chameleon that reacts to and provokes Gregory with ease. Geoff Rice is believable as the runaway, and gets totally red faced when his character is getting emotional or shouting. In a small theater like Stage Left, where the performance practically takes place in the audience’s lap, it can be too much of a good thing. The ultimate saving grace occurs in two scenes at Paul’s apartment.
In one scene, Gregory breaks down after screaming at Paul about trust, and worthiness. This is a flashback scene and you wonder if Gregory is talking about Paul, his mother, his father, himself, or all of the above. Paul adopts his psychologist persona, soothing the distraught and emotionally spent Gregory, whose outburst may have been a cathartic release. This is mostly Rice’s scene, and the shouting makes the most sense here as you feel Gregory’s fury at the betrayals by the adults in his life.
In an earlier, and very harrowing moment, Gregory’s mouth and bravado get the better of him, and he offers to have sex with Paul as payment for the sandwich, and because this was really what Paul wanted. Paul launches into a graphic description of sex with Gregory that includes a shower, enema, bondage, dripping candle wax, and a detailed recitation of sex acts. Throughout this scene Paul moves closer and closer to Gregory, finally leaning right over and practically resting on top of the terrified youth who is balled up on the couch, cowering, crying and begging to leave. He is physically exercising power over the boy, who is too traumatized to resist. This is followed by Paul’s satisfied pronouncement that Gregory must be a virgin and a withdrawal of the possibility of sex. It is, to quote Paul, “a mind fuck” that he is engaging in, and it is successful.
This scene was too real and chilling for me. Runaways need money and sex sells. Watching the scene I could not help but wonder if how many adults have subjected vulnerable teenagers to just such a moment, and carried it through. Both Wells and Rice were compelling in this most intense moment.
While Cuttings is not an overly emotional play, its intensity stays with you long after you have left the theater. This is a train wreck about to happen, and the audience is along for the ride, waiting for the moment. We recognize the characters, see what they are doing, and know what will occur, but we don’t necessarily invest ourselves emotionally, even with Gregory. I suspect that is because there is no way out, no hope offered. At the end, as Gregory touches Paul’s scars and then fondles the razor, we realize that he is trapped in the nightmare and may not wish to exit since it may seem a far safer place than anywhere else he has been.
This play is as topical as it gets, since runaway teens are a fact of life in any large city. The emotional violence that young people are subjected to and the predatory practices of adults who search out the vulnerable are also a fact of life. Unfortunately, most of us are living in a world that never sees or acknowledges that reality. What are we doing when we encounter people like Gregory?
I read fan fic and can appreciate a well-told erotic story, regardless of the pairing. However, there are those who write stories that include rape, followed by the inevitable ‘comforting’ scene that somehow makes the rape all right. It doesn’t. I was reminded of this as I watched the scene in which Paul describes the sex he intends to have with Gregory. All of the elements of a potential erotic moment were there, except for one thing: mutual desire. Context is everything. It is a different matter when it is consenting adults teasing each other with descriptions of practices that both find enjoyable and arousing. Instead, Paul was an adult exercising power over an adolescent who was in no way capable of really stopping him. Had Paul chosen to, he could very well have taken Gregory exactly as he described. There is nothing joyful or mutually satisfying about such a moment, whether in real life or fiction. Pretending otherwise will not change that fact.
This link will take you to a poem by a 12 year old regarding the phenomenon of cutting.