One-Man Comedy Show ‘Male Intellect’ Appeals To Specific Audience

Robert Dubac has been performing his one-man show “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?” for a couple of decades now. He seems like he really knows his audience: heterosexual middle-aged couples, specifically those who share inherited old-world values that define men as sex-obsessed, henpecked screw-ups and women as self-righteous self-contradictory harridans.

He talks about how “us guys” don’t dance too flamboyantly because “we’re so homophobic.” Then he acts out exactly what that fine line on the dance floor is. He attributes a broad swath of male behavior to one basic thing: drunkenness.

An equal-opportunity offender, Dubac explains that women like to set rules and men don’t. He then opens a large book titled “Rules” to show that it’s full of blank pages.

“They’re always changing the rules!” he says, moaning. He jokes about menstrual periods, disapproving looks and the supposedly unanswerable question: “Does this dress make me look heavy?”

I may be a married man in my 50s, but I really couldn’t relate at all to Dubac’s parade of sexist stereotypes and dubious delineations of gender differences. I found them more insulting than amusing; trite and ignorant rather than enlightening. But I was clearly in the minority on opening night of the three-week engagement “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?” at the Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury. Myself excluded, Dubac knows his audience, and they find his battle-of-the-sexes banter funny.

What I can appreciate, on a technical level, is that Dubac has crafted a fully theatrical 90-minute show, which opens with Dubac riffing on the titles of a stack of self-help books that he wheels out on a cart. His joke-laden journey of self-discovery culminates in a rather neat party trick involving a couple of cigarettes.

Amid all the clothes strewn about the stage are enough costumes for Dubac to create a host of other characters who counsel the show’s hapless hero Bobby as he reels from a setback with his fiancee. These outspoken pals, known collectively as The Chauvinists, include a retired Army colonel, a French philosophy student, a leather-jacketed rowdy named Fast Eddie and an elderly fisherman. There’s also the disembodied voice of a woman, credited as Feminine Voice and belonging to Dubac’s real-life wife Lauren Sinclair.

The bulk of the show is a sophomoric stand-up-style comic riff on the question “What does a woman want?”

Dubac is an amiable and alert performer, even when you’re wincing at his simple-minded monologue. He makes his hideously outdated material seem as fresh as possible, working in a couple of recent-vintage Trump jokes and a Caitlyn Jenner reference.

With all the thought put into its presentation, “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?” makes a very similar one-man show on the same theme, Rob Becker’s “Defending the Caveman,” seem positively primitive by comparison.

If only Dubac hadn’t chosen such a tired, old, divisive topic for this otherwise impressive but ultimately intellect-challenged tour-de-force.

THE MALE INTELLECT: AN OXYMORON?, written and performed by Robert Dubac, plays through Oct. 15 at Seven Angels Theatre, 1 Plank Road, Waterbury. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 pm.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.; with added Thursday matinees at 2 p.m. on Sept. 28, Oct. 5 and 12. $39.50. 203-757-4676 and sevenangels.com