Synopsis
Tira Tells Everything There is to Know About Herself & The Bodybuilders
Published by Dramatists Play Service
4 Male 1 Female
When he goes off to retrieve the present he forgot to bring her, she is visited, in turn, by four other and quite dissimilar possible lovers-all played by the single male actor in the play
There is Poof, the lisping faggot; Lucio, the uncertain Latin gigolo; Brute, the belching lout; and, finally, the sensitive, withdrawn Tib
In their encounters Tira acquires qualities complementary to each, but all ultimately disappoint, and Tira, having found that all there is to know about herself is nothing, turns to suicide as the inevitable alternative
The Bodybuilders presents Keith plodding on with his novel, while his wife, Kate, methodically denigrates his output with her bitchy comments
Keith is fully her match in nastiness, much to the consternation of the two bare-chested young musclemen, Powie and Flash, who suddenly pop in to introduce themselves and are caught in the crossfire
But the confrontation of their purely physical and oddly innocent presence with the jaded, cerebral psyches of the two antagonists produces an unexpected detente-which will last, no doubt, only so long as it takes to devise another lacerating, masochistic routine to succeed it
A highly stylized, bitingly caustic, yet extremely funny study of a writer and his wife whose barbed thrusts at each other let no wounds heal