“The Boy in the Basement” shows us what happens when a struggling young male writer decides to adopt a female pen name to produce a commercial romance novel about four college women who turn the tables on a sexy intruder.
Writer-actress Katharine Heller (right) based the play on a self-published novel she wrote a few years ago in college after she picked up a box of romance paperbacks at a garage sale.
“The Boy in the Basement” is about the differences between female and male romantic fantasies as played out in our pop culture.
Heller shows how her writer hero (played by Nick Fondulis) keeps veering from female romance novel territory into a male porn scenario as three of the four girls decide to live out their sexual fantasies after tying up Lance Speedworth (Tom Macy, right) in their basement.
Heller has written a good role for herself in the form of Xandra, a hot-blooded Latina who has a torrid night with Lance but then heads in an entirely different sexual direction.
The twist in the play comes from the most naïve of the four college girls — Anna (Meghan Powe) — who doesn’t know Lance is being used as a sex slave and falls in love with him.
Lance also finds himself falling for the sweet and unavailable Anna which gives Heller lots of opportunities to satirize the mix of love and sex in all of those paperback books with bare-chested men on the covers.
Nick Fondulis is hilarious as the writer who spends much of the show on the side of the stage narrating the action, but can’t help getting involved in what his steamy characters are doing.
“The Boy in the Basement” is perhaps closer to an extended comedy sketch than a full-fledged play, but the talented and attractive company of actors make it a fun 75 minutes.
(The New York International Fringe Festival is presenting “The Boy in the Basement” on Thursday at 3:45 p.m., Aug. 21 at 11:45 a.m. and Aug. 23 at 10 p.m. The performances are at Manhattan’s Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at www.FringeNYC.com or by calling 1-866-468-7619.)
