Sex Therapy: A Black Comedy

Ian C. Nelson is assistant director of libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan, and président de la Troupe du Jour, Regina Summer Stage.

Sex Therapy is a play of unrelenting comedy that rains a wearing barrage
of repartee intended as social satire. Talk therapy, sex therapy, group
sharing, and absurd legal argumentation are all skewered.

The plot revolves around a number of indi-viduals in group therapy. One
of the women develops an infatuation with the therapist. Somehow out of
this situation is born a mock trial

that calls up a chaotic, hallucinatory future. The whole play appears to
be a vain effort to be Ortonesque; indeed, some of the lines fit
precisely into that vein: “One ought to consider reincarnation—a
much cheaper form of health care.” But in the end, one wonders at it
all. Even in her own words, Melfi gives us the sense that she has
“perform[ed] verbal acrobatics and for what?”