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Katherine Dempsey’s Penumbra is probably the leading contender for the Naughtiest of the Wildside award. Directed by Paul Van Dyck and starring Catherine Bérubé, Michelle Boback, Christopher  Moore and Howard Rosenstein, this is the show’s second run following the 2009 Montreal Fringe Festival.

The play explores the gray area that quickly forms in relationships in this age of instant communication and gratification. The plot substitutes the traditional love triangle for a love square, or maybe something more like a parallelogram. Bérubé plays teenager Constance, a Nabokivian nymphette who enters into a threesome with a married (but open to exploration) couple played by Boback and Rosenstein. The twist is that Constance has been withholding sex from her doting and smitten boyfriend (Moore) who thinks that she’s purity defined. The ensemble is terrific.  Bérubé’s final monologue about what is out there in the cyber world waiting for young girls is wonderfully chilling, exquisitely delivered and convinced me to raise my future children on some kind of compound with no internet access. Boback is perfect as the committed wife whose every action is dedicated to her husband’s happiness even if it means her own pain and suffering.

The lighting for the piece is terrific, but of course what else could one expect from a show titled Penumbra? The characters move between places of light and shadow, in front of and behind sheets, veiled and unveiled in such a way as to show us that true honesty is not what happens under the sheets, but over them, in the moments we are forced to face ourselves and others.  {w}