Review: Fingers & Spoons Is a Solo Play About How Not to Open Your Marriage

Marriages throughout history have mostly been open — for men. The expectation of sexual monogamy has always been applied more strictly to the wife, who was meant to stay home, raise children, and suffer through her husband’s infidelities or risk destitution. But as legal barriers to women’s equality have fallen, and as women’s earning power has approached parity with (and in some places, surpassed) men, it is only natural that the fairer sex would demand a deal that is…fairer.

What does that look like? Pascale Roger-McKeever promises to give us an idea in Fingers & Spoons, now performing at Soho Playhouse. Subtitled “The Ins and Outs of an Open Marriage,” it’s mostly outs in this confessional solo show, which feels like an interminable therapy session that we, the analysts, are paying to attend.

Josh Iacovelli’s scenic design, which features a rope sculpture suspended from the grid in what appears to be some baroque form of Japanese bondage, makes for a provocative opening image. But we know this story is headed nowhere good or sexy from the first scene, in which Hubby (the character name Roger-McKeever gives to her ex-husband) begs for an open marriage near that always precarious seven-year mark.

“Please please please, it’ll be safe, I promise,” Roger-McKeever imitates him with a generic dumb man voice. It’s abundantly clear that he’s already sleeping with another woman, and his invitation for his wife to explore on her own seems to be a concession meant to allow him to keep doing it.

She reluctantly agrees and begins sleeping with a significantly older neighbor whom she refers to as the BuJew (because he is a Jewish convert to Buddhism). She instantly catches feelings, though it’s never quite clear what she sees in this charmless over-the-hill attorney, beyond one important talent: “And before Mom can evaluate further, he has stuck his finger inside of her and carried her by her vag’ over to his bed.”

The weirdness of this play is exacerbated by Roger-McKeever’s insistence on speaking in third person and referring to herself as “mom.” You might cringe (I sure did), but this is an important reminder that there is a child involved in this story. Disappointingly, Roger-McKeever has little to say about the trials of securing adequate childcare while she and her husband are off prosecuting their respective midlife crises.

There are other characters: Mom swaps stories with her best girlfriend, a cowgirl; and she also flirts with a surfer who seems to be Australian, although it’s never entirely clear based on the fuzzy dialect Roger-McKeever puts on to play him.

When you see a really good solo performer, like Eddie Izzard or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, you are never in doubt about the identity of the speaker; the characters are immediately distinct. Not so with Roger-McKeever, whose physicality and speech never significant alters from character to character, making multi-character scenes very difficult to follow.

Director Austin Pendleton has not led her to sharpen these portrayals, resulting in a confusing 80-minute monologue that might as well be breathlessly delivered over a protracted brunch. At least then we would have bottomless mimosas to offset the boredom of hearing about a garden-variety marital crackup that the storyteller clearly thinks is sui generis.

Fingers & Spoons is not about an open marriage, but an inevitable divorce. This is a shame, because there are people who actually make nonmonogamy work, and they’re not all insufferable hipsters eager to tell the New York Times about their polycule. (One suspects that discretion is the secret sauce in any open relationship.) Those are the people who could really tell you about the ins and outs of an open marriage, but they’re not talking.