99 Ways to Fuck a Swan

A lot goes on in Kim Rosenstock’s survey of sexual deviance, directed in its world premiere production by Megan Kate Ward. Not, as the title suggests, a swan sutra, the show crosses centuries and continents to examine a great catalog of kinks. Mario Calcagno plays Dave, a professional photoshopper who takes a freshman fiction course in hopes of working out some of his many issues on paper. The teacher, Fiona (Brooker Fletcher), assigns him to write about Leda’s seduction by swan-shaped Zeus. The subject suits him, since he’s got a thing about women and cats, and he pens an epic while we watch. Rosenstock is interested in the ways people with unusual fetishes cope with their proclivities, and many of her characters are ruined by their attempts to find gratification.  Given the subject matter of the show, it would be easy for a director to wallow in vulgarity or make a clown of Dave, but Ward emphasizes the loneliness and despair of a conflicted cat-fancier, and understands that loneliness can be funny.