“Toronto has Little Italy, Little Korea, Little India, two gay villages — there is still segregation between cultures, genders and sexualities,” says The Red Light District theatre company’s artistic director, Ted Witzel. “But sex is the great equalizer.” When Witzel was writing a new adaptation of La Ronde he wondered, “Where do lonely or sexually bored straight people go for a connection?” Red Light District is known for its site-specific productions, and when the swingers’ venue Wicked Club offered its fledgling cabaret space, Witzel jumped at it. Gay men are a new demographic for Wicked, but Witzel likes that. “The original La Ronde is a series of straight hookups, but I have thrown that out. La Ronde was a snapshot of the Vienna sexual underground, and a snapshot of Toronto’s sexual underground today has to include queers. We’re here and that’s part of the normal fabric of the city. And I don’t have a lot of hetero hookup experiences.” If Witzel decides to expand his sexual history, Wicked will be offering discounts for theatregoers who want to stay for the club’s regular erotic activities.

This adaptation of La Ronde is for serious theatregoers. A riot of clever ideas and thematic concerns never quite gels into an evening of entertainment and, clocking in at two and half hours on opening night, is a bit of a marathon. The splendid faux-erotic interior of Wicked Club is an ideal setting, and the committed cast exploits every inch of space. Never dropping character and relentlessly interacting with the audience, the cast manages to invest the stylized dialogues with some soul and occasional erotic heat. And there is a lot of tension as the audience waits breathlessly to see if director Ted Witzel will be able to come up with yet another way to stylishly simulate sex - and then he does. Raffaele Ciampaglia churns up a sexy storm as a dizzy twink who is stripped to his leather jockstrap and sodomized, atop a grand piano, with a strap-on. The deep rich vocal tones of Beau Dixon were a pleasant surprise. Hopefully we'll see, and hear, him in a musical format again soon. Everyone in the large cast of 11 works hard and gets at least one moment to shine, but, no surprise, it is Tyson James (familiar to many of us as another club scene persona) who holds the audience's attention most intensely; as the show opener and closer, James tucks it under her arm and struts, in mile-high platforms, off with it. 

La Ronde runs Thurs–Sun until Sun, June 4 at Wicked Club, 1032 Queen St W. theredlightdistrict.ca