Naked Love - Keeps Its Clothes On

Naked Love is a new work created by and starring locals, Tiffany Anderson and Cory Haas. Billed as an “unapologetic look at two twentysomethings navigating through their first adult relationship” it is a story about two unhappy and cynical people, both rebounding from failed relationships as they try to discover the meaning of love.

The show advertises itself as being naughty and risqué and is rated as not appropriate for minors … I’m not sure why. I must admit I misunderstood and thought I was embarking on an intimate show about sexuality and love. The misleading advertising led to disappointment. I found the play to really be about two boring people having a boring conversation, sprinkled with a few jokes.  

While not totally bereft of some funny and poignant moments, the couple’s relationship seems vacuous. These characters are hard to like, they are superficial and two-dimensional. Such an emphasis is placed on their relationship's awkward failings that I never understood why these two people got together in the first place. Frankly, they don’t seem to like each other very much. Both characters allude to the fact that breaking up is hard, that it is easy to get stuck in a routine, but this is an easy copout. The play lacks scenes that showed them truly enjoying each other’s company. 

Perhaps the problem is their love appears to be born from the bottom of a booze bottle, the only scenes where they appear happy they are drinking heavily. Don’t get me wrong; I am not judging the abundance of alcohol consumption. My point is I wanted to spend more time with them in the happy days of their relationship. I wanted to understand what it was that made them fall in love and make a life together in the first place. I wanted to see the joy.

Simply designed, the production made good use of projections, which were beautifully shot and created by Corwin Ferguson. However, I felt the time lapse sequences of the images, while effective in propelling the story, could have been slowed down to cover more of the clunky and noisy scene changes. 

In the final analysis Tiffany and Cory are two twentysomethings with unrealistic expectations and poor communication who take each other for granted. Their relationship concludes in the manner I knew that it would and I can’t say I found myself caring.