SELF HELP, OR THE TOWER OF PSYCHOBABBLE, Bailiwick Repertory. LA playwright Clark Carlton’s rather overwritten dating comedy–the latest installment in Bailiwick’s gay-themed “Pride ’99” series–indulges in a lot of analytical excesses for a play that purports to ridicule our dependence on shrinkspeak and talk therapy. A sensible 35-year-old gay screenwriter cursed with half-baked relationships cures himself of needing a cure, yet the play is burdened by references to codependency, narcissism, passive aggression, fear of intimacy, mother complexes, a sense of victimization, lack of boundaries, identity insecurity, and other pathologies. Methinks the play doth diagnose too much. And unlike Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy, which also mocks dependence on messed-up analysts, too few laughs leaven this long lecture.
