'My First Time' at Gateway is indecently entertaining.

AuthorKolas, Paul
PositionLiving

Byline: Paul Kolas

'My First Time'

1/2

By Ken Davenport, directed by Bill Guy. Presented by Gateway Players Theatre at the Gateway Arts Barn, 111 Main St., Soutbridge. Performances April 17 & 18 at 7:30 p.m., April 19 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $13 adults, $11seniors 60+. Due to adult subject matter, no one under 18 will be admitted. For reservations call (508) 764-4531.With Joshua Raymond, Gwen O'Brien, Joseph Sawyer and Kaiti Figueroa.

SOUTHBRIDGE -- Voltaire famously said that "It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue.'' That quote, along with many other interesting revelations, including the fact that 120 million acts of human sexual intercourse occur each and every day, flashes across a screen in Gateway Players' indecently entertaining production of Ken Davenport's "My First Time,'' which opened on Friday night to a very receptive audience.

Davenport, a Sturbridge native who made his acting debut in Gateway's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier'' in 1977, is one shrewd huckster, creating what in some ways is a kissing cousin to "The Vagina Monologues,'' and based on an actual website called myfirsttime.com, allowing people to anonymously share their first sexual encounters. Whether or not they're all true confessions, Davenport picked from more than 50,000 stories those he felt would make pervasively relevant material for a theatrical presentation.

Director Bill Guy's smoothly paced, 90-minute production covers a lot of territory, much of it hilarious, some of it sobering and poignant. Joshua Raymond (Man #1), Gwen O'Brien (Woman #1), Joseph Sawyer (Man #2) and Kaiti Figueroa (Woman #2) are quite a tag-team ensemble, relating a multitude of first-time sexual experiences with terrifically engaging personality. There are snappy revelations and extended monologues, and they cover everything from sex in airplanes and motels to rape and incest, a wide range of experiences and statistical snippets delivered with humor, candor and sensitivity.

Among O'Brien's Woman #1 well-imparted stories are those about coming from a family that believed in arranged marriages, and not having sex until her wedding night in 1951, and that of...

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