The female view

By JILLIAN JONES, Register Staff Writer

Cavemen, cavemen, cavemen …

Dirty underwear and wet towels on the floor will not bring you closer to the universe. Take a hint from your cavewomen and turn on the sacred cave washing machine every once in awhile.

“Defending the Caveman,” a one-man show written by Rob Becker and performed by Chris “Sully” Sullivan at the Lincoln Theater last weekend, explores disparities between men and women as it wades through the muddy waters of the gender gap. For two hours, the show delves into the ways women and men fight, the sanctity of the remote control and even the ceremonial filling of the chip bowl.

The languages of the sexes, writes Becker, do not cross over.

Suppose you are at a party with six women, he suggests, and the chip bowl is getting low. All six women rise together, most likely hand in hand, and make their way to the kitchen. Once there, they refill the bowl together, birds chirping and tying ribbons in their hair.

There are no birds at the men’s party. The same situation elicits another response.

“Hey man, the chip bowl’s getting low.”

No one moves.

“I bought the chips.”

“It’s my bowl.”

“I ate the chips.”

“What did you do?”

“I … I watched TV.”

And that man refills the chips. The process, Becker explains, is a negotiation. TV man lost the negotiation; he understands that it is his role to refill the bowl. “No one cares that an hour just went by and no one had chips.”

The problem, Becker says, comes when the party is mixed company. Someone points out that the chip bowl is getting low. One man says, “I bought the chips.” Women stare in disgust. Expletives abound.

“No one wants to negotiate?” asks the man. “I must have missed the meeting.”

A little bit anthropology, a little bit stand-up, “Defending the Caveman” draws exasperated sighs from women in the audience, looks of recognition between couples, as well as the occasional elbow jab: You do that all the time!

It isn’t so much that the humor is particularly original. The accepted stereotype is that women like to shop and men will gladly wear the dirty T-shirt straight from the hamper. The originality, rather, is in Becker’s explanation of how this gender gap arose. The behavioral differences between men and women, the show claims, is the result of evolutionary processes stemming from the days of the caveman. Today, men and women are simply the modern-day versions of hunters and gatherers.

Women, as they shop, gather clothes with no end goal in mind. They take their time, taking in all of the sights and sounds around them. Reminiscent of the days when they had to store for the winter months ahead, women “fill their basket” and never stop at just one shirt. They are gatherers.

Men, on the other hand, just need a T-shirt. They hunt one down, and the first one they find that meets their needs, they kill. Then, “me go watch TV.”

Becker may not garner scholarly acclaim among anthropologists, but he does win more than a few laughs.

Sullivan, who took over the show from Becker, boasts tremendous energy, sincerity (his looks of utter confusion are priceless) and a dominant stage presence. Sullivan’s timing is impeccable, and he seems to be truly enjoying himself.

The audience does, too.

Before the curtain went up, one couple in the audience had their own diametric debate.

A woman’s voice: “The show is about the difference between how men and women think.”

A man’s voice: “The show is about sex.”

The male view

By MICHAEL WATERSON, For the Register

Cavemen aren’t very good around the cave. When not seeking a mystic vision by sitting on the floor in a circle of sacred objects — like used bath towels and dirty underwear — they are busy hogging the remote control, killing TV channels as if they were mastodons and ignoring the woman of the cave …  which means sleeping under the stars later.

That’s only one of the lessons of “Defending the Caveman,” the one-man show written by Rob Becker and performed by Chris “Sully” Sullivan at the Lincoln Theater over the weekend.

In truth, cavemen — nowadays just called “men” — need defending. In the modern world our hunter skills, honed by eons of evolution, are pretty much obsolete. After all, you can’t feed and clothe your family with the meat and skin of a TV channel.

Women, on the other hand, are gatherers. Whereas men need silence and focus to hunt, women need to constantly glean and exchange information.

Women achieve goals by cooperation: They all go to the kitchen together to refill the bowl of chips. Men achieve their goals by negotiation: Whoever didn’t buy the chips or the beer or provide the TV has to take the bowl into the kitchen and refill it.

Men and women, Sullivan tells us, were biologically engineered with skill-sets designed to compliment each other.

The problem for men is that in our systematized, computerized, information-rich world cooperation — think “networking” — is highly valued. In a world based on cooperation, negotiation puts you outside the group and screams, “I am an egotistical, self-centered (censored).” 

When a man tries to negotiate with a woman he winds up sleeping outside the cave.

Another lesson from the show: Women are tuned-in to the cycles of the moon and the rhythms of life. Men are tuned in to whatever is on ESPN.

Saturday night’s audience was definitely tuned in to Sullivan and what he had to say.

Rarely has the gender gap been mapped out on the cave wall in such hilarious detail. Becker’s script is loaded with comic epiphanies for both sexes. A look around the very healthy house revealed plenty of nods, prods and elbow pokes between mates.

“Marriage counselors send their clients to see the show,” Sullivan said in a post-show interview backstage.

Like the “Venus and Mars” books of a number of years ago, “Caveman” looks at gender differences as the source of misunderstanding and conflict, although in a much more entertaining format. In “Caveman” gender differences are dissected with the scalpel of humor, not bludgeoned with a club of didacticism.

Judging by the number of couples who walked out holding hands, it would seem to be a good show to present around Valentine’s Day.

Sullivan, who has been performing the show for about five years since taking over from author Becker, described Saturday’s performance as perhaps “the best show I’ve done.”

Speaking as an audience member it would be hard to imagine a better one. Sullivan’s timing, delivery, range and technique appeared flawless throughout the two-hour monologue. A big man — something over 6 feet 6 inches by my estimate — he’s got a physical presence that perfectly fits the role.

Any man who has spent his share of nights sleeping outside the cave can vouch for “Caveman’s” insight.

Are cavemen headed for extinction?  It’s possible. But maybe women will keep us around just for laughs.