99 Ways to Fuck a Swan

Kim Rosenstock's newish play begins with the myth of Leda and the swan (Zeus in swan form) and wends its way through a Michelangelo painting, a man named Rudolph who buys it, and a couple standing in a museum looking at it. This Washington Ensemble Theatre production, "set in a world of bizarre romantic obsessions and everyday ineptitude," is directed by Ali el-Gasseir.

For all its superficial salaciousness, and despite its energetic performances, 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan has the bored, mechanical, compulsive feeling of Marquis de Sade novel—it builds elaborately cruel situations and crunches its characters through the gears and wringers, but it doesn’t know why. By the final scene, Swan feels like just another academic exercise. If you sucked out all the self-consciously naughty bits, the play would have nothing left to say. BRENDAN KILEY