One advertising campaign promotes Bruce Norris's new play as nudge-nudge-wink-wink political satire and another attempts to sell it as a battle-of-the-sexes romp. Don't believe either one. The dramatic premise might have its real-life counterparts, and it might have been Norris's intent to capitalize on the tabloid factor, but both representations are as fraudulent as a diamond mine in Dolton.
The story of Domesticated opens with William Pulver calling a news conference to answer allegations regarding his part in an incident involving an injured prostitute currently languishing in a concussive coma. It then documents the progress of his family members as they salvage what they can from the fallout—wife Judy finds an eager audience for her tell-all book, teenage daughter Casey rails against her father's misdeeds, while adopted daughter Cassidy immerses herself in studies of mating habits in lower organisms. Since the Pulvers's immediate environment appears to be populated entirely by women—even William's attorney is Judy's best friend—their recovery is mostly successful. The erring husband's notoriety, however, renders him jobless—he was a gynecologist before seeking public office, you see. The more he continues to protest the severity of his punishment and the degree of his culpability, however, the more hostility toward his perceived persecutors spurs him to engage in behavior worsening his circumstances. Ultimately, though, the question is not whether it's natural for men or woman to keep their pants zipped, nor is it why people occupying lofty positions take risks deliberately endangering their privileged status, but why they agree to responsibilities mandating promises they know that they will break. If William never bought into the concept of marital fidelity, why did he pursue a career in a predominantly female sphere, followed by marriage, fatherhood, and civic leadership? Why, too, did Judy likewise embark on a contract based in illusion and thus doomed to inevitable failure?
More puzzling is why Norris thinks he can repeat the ruse employed in The Qualms of throwing down two hours of let's-you-and-him-fight rhetoric and declaring it a finished play. (David Mamet can get away with this gambit nowadays, but Norris can't—not yet.) Does Norris assume we are as obsessed with the Rich and Stupid as his cartoonish media vultures and gullible gossips, or does he consider Steppenwolf subscribers his personal focus group? Whatever the motive, it leaves playgoers no recourse but to commiserate with an excellent cast (nobody projects "Iron Lady" better than Mary Beth Fisher) assigned the task of refereeing comic-book confrontations designed to spark conversation, outrage and divorce proceedings.
