Frankie Moran

San Diego Arts

Broadway San Diego presents Rob Becker's "Defending the Caveman"

Hit play or stand-up routine?
By Frankie Moran
Posted on Wed, Nov 12th, 2008
Last updated Sun, Nov 16th, 2008

A video montage can be a nifty way to open a show. In the case of Rob Becker's "Defending the Caveman," the short video in question depicts a guy in his day-to-day interactions with his wife and the rest of the world around him. As he's caught drinking from the carton and rummaging through dirty shirts looking for one unoffending enough to wear again, his cavemanish ways inspire guffaws of recognition from the women in the audience (not to mention the audible pride coming from their dates).

Isaac Lamb

Copyright©2007 Jenni Girtman

As pure entertainment, it's a nice set-up to the one-man play, currently running at the Balboa Theatre through Sunday. There's a reason "Defending the Caveman," with its universal appeal, has been such a worldwide hit (35 countries and counting). For the greater part of two decades, the show has enlightened audiences with its pop psych look at the differences between the sexes.

The opening video, though, is an appropriate precursor to the rest of the show, which seems less a play than an extended stand-up comedy routine for its sole performer, in this case an amiable cub of a guy by the name of Isaac Lamb. It's Mr. Lamb who explains the ways of the caveman to us.

Caveman hunts. Cavewoman gathers. This would explain why, for many men, a trip to the store is a minutes-long hunt for that which he needs, while most women can easily spend the whole day gathering...er, "shopping."

This lowest-common-denominator brand of humor was probably a lot more groundbreaking at its premiere in 1991, back before "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" and similar schools of thought permeated every talk show and became ingrained in pop culture. Today, it's a quaint throwback to the days when such ideas, and this show, were new.

Still, the audience, mostly comprised of [heterosexual] couples of all ages on "date night," chuckled and howled appreciatively at Mr. Lamb's antics. If the actor's comedic timing wasn't always as finely tuned to the large house as one might have hoped (on several occasions, he appeared to be waiting for a bigger audience response that never came), Mr. Lamb's physical approximation of the caveman's customary response to anything he doesn't understand was spot-on. Slack-jawed, with a vacant expression and arms hanging lamely at his sides, it's a look many a wife, girlfriend, or fiancee knows well when, for instance, she asks her caveman whether he prefers the wedding invitation envelopes in cream, eggshell, or off white.

Though "Defending the Caveman" is undeniably geared toward couples who can (for the time being, anyway) legally get married here in the Golden State, even I, as a gay man, found much that was entertaining in the evening's performance. When asked about the specific color of my own wedding invitation envelopes someday, I too will probably answer something along the lines of "uhh...white?" Similarly, I don't understand why a man in his own home is not permitted to use the bathroom hand towels ("Don't touch those! Those are for guests!" comes the yell down the hall), and I'd just as soon pay a visit to the dentist as go schlepping around a mall all day.

So "Defending the Caveman" is a reasonably entertaining night out, and just about anyone out there can identify with at least some part of it.

Is it great theatre? Well, I'll leave that to you to decide. The program for the non-Equity tour tells us just two pertinent details about the production: (a) Mr. Becker wrote it, and (b) Mr. Lamb stars in it. What it leaves out, though, is even more telling.

"Defending the Caveman" does not appear to have been shaped by anyone acting as a director (at least no one who wanted to take public credit for it). The set -- a Flintstones-style armchair and television flanked by cave-like drawings of a Venus figurine and a Man-with-Erection hunting a bison -- and minimal lighting effects are not attributed to anyone, either.

Maybe an anonymous caveman is responsible. Who knows? Messrs. Becker and Lamb, though, defend him wholeheartedly.

About the author: Frankie Moran is a graduate of the 2008 NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater at USC's Annenberg School of Communication. He was also a Phi Theta Kappa valedictorian at San Diego's own Mesa College and graduated from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television. Frankie got his start in theater criticism writing reviews of Broadway shows during a short stint at Columbia University. Since then, he has written for the North County Times and the Las Cruces Bulletin.
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