UNBECOMING

By Christine Howey

IF YOU ASK MOST SEX experts about the best advice they would have to insure a pleasurable bumpuglies encounter, they’d probably say something along the lines of “take your time, slow down and explore.” So it’s odd that the play Becoming Dr. Ruth, about the renowned media sex maven Dr. Ruth Westheimer, seems so rushed and skittery.

In this one-woman play starring Naomi Jacobson, playwright Mark St. Germain employs a chronological structure for Dr. Ruth’s life, throwing in flashbacks and flash-forwards along the way to delve into assorted nooks and crannies in her life. But the play doesn’t linger very long on any of them. The result is a bit like reading a Wikipedia entry for 90 minutes—or rushing through a sexual liaison so you don’t miss the cold open on Saturday Night Live Westheimer (née Siegel) is certainly worthy of a biographical play. Born in Germany in 1928 to a Jewish family, she is a Holocaust survivor, and served as a sniper for a Zionist underground paramilitary organization. After moving to France, earning an undergraduate degree and teaching psychology at the Sorbonne, she immigrated to the U.S. That’s where she eventually hit the jackpot in the 1980’s with her “Sexually Speaking” radio call-in show.

The diminutive (4’ 7”), frank, and witty Westheimer became the beloved “Dr. Ruth” to many for correcting misconceptions about sex. And under the direction of Holly Twyford, Jacobson checks off the milestones in her subject’s life, including her third and longest marriage to Fred Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor himself.

on the stage and suspended from the ceiling. They serve as hidey holes for various props and a couple surprising stage effects, as well as screens for Sarah Tundermann’s projections of family photos and other relevant biographical data nodes. But the reason for their existence—the fact that she’s supposedly moving out of her current abode—doesn’t really factor into the show in any meaningful way.

Jacobson does a creditable job echoing Dr. Ruth’s distinctive German-infused accent, her quick giggle, and her no-nonsense advice when she advises her listeners to “love your penis, love your vagina.” Some of the clever rejoinders she was famous for are here, but time has dimmed some of the jokes that felt so fresh and startling a few decades ago. Now, with people getting their sex advice from viciously candid experts such as Dan Savage and many others, Dr. Ruth’s once gaspinducing comments now seem rather quaint.

This all plays out on scenic designer Paige Hathaway’s set, chockablock with plain white boxes, dozens of which are piled

In short, Becoming Dr. Ruth does exactly what it promises. And you do get a sense, if a fleeting one, of what it felt like for Westheimer to lose her family to the predations of the Nazis. But her family’s oft-referenced advice to always “be cheerful and smile” seems barely sufficient to explain how she emerged from those travails and how it shaped her journey.

By ticking so many boxes of Dr. Ruth’s life, the script never dives deeply enough to allow us to see past this remarkable woman’s carefully crafted and entertaining persona. And that’s a shame, since her story could resonate in so many more profound ways if only the playwright had slowed down and— wink-wink, nudge-nudge— explored a bit more.