Ivy Rose and James Jelkin Photo by Matt Liebergall

The photographer in the playwright's fiction is Norman Lewis, a rockstar of Manhattan's 1970s downtown arts scene whose best-known work was of nude women. At the play's outset, it's 2010 and his widow Gina (Jane Ives) is gathering material in her deceased husband's longtime SoHo studio for a museum's major retrospective of his career. (Very good work by set designer Kate Rance, revealing exposed brick and framing the playing space with unfocused representations of Lewis' work.) She's shocked to discover a series of prints that apparently no one else has seen before.

They're never revealed to the audience, but Gina describes one particular print to curator Martin (Yuval Boim) as, "the most erotic fucking sleeping girl you've ever seen in your life," and Martin calls it "a major revelation" that not only will change the focus of his museum's exhibit, but will require art historians and biographers to rewrite all considerations of Lewis' career.

Then, in the first of several flashbacks to the same studio in 1970, we see 35-year-old Lewis (James Jelkin) engaged in post-coital giggling with Robin (Ivy Rose), a self-described "Village girl," who is not only a fan of his work, but has spotted him and his wife shopping at Balducci's.

Exuding a hip, downtown swagger, it's mentioned that Lewis often has sex with women to get them to pose for him, but Robin clearly states that she does not want him to photograph her, insisting that she decides who sees her body.

"Don't take a picture when I'm sleeping," she firmly instructs, but the scene ends with Lewis setting up his camera and clicking away at her nude body as she slumbers.

When we return to 2010, adult Robin (Susan Bennett) has learned of the discovered photos and confirms they are indeed of her. She also confirms that at the time they were taken, Lewis was unaware she was 15. (Ms. Rose is of legal age and there doesn't seem to be any attempt to make her look 15.)

Fearful of having her identity discovered, being tagged on social media, and spending the rest of her life being associated with "the power of the stolen image," adult Robin wants the photos and negatives destroyed, and at this point, having witnessed her clear "no" and learned of her age at the time, can anyone in the audience disagree with her? The playwright seems to think it's debatable enough to cover the length of a two-act play.

Martin, who earlier expressed a longing to have been alive during the more sexually carefree New York art world of the 1970s, verbally assaults Robin for wanting to, "take a work of art that can endure for centuries and remove it from the universe." He calls her, "a Taliban destroying the Buddhas" and threatens to make her name very public if she causes the photographs to be destroyed.

Gina's reaction is more personal. Though her late husband had taken nudes of her, she can recognize them to be mere "studies" and she's jealous that Robin could have inspired such erotic genius from his lens.

The second act delves into various tangents. A new character is introduced, attempts at compromise are discussed, and a new issue asks us to consider whether or not homemade pornography should be regarded as part of the creative process. The opinion that anything an artist does can be justified as being art seems suggested, if not fully stated.

And, of course, the ability to separate great art from an artist's deplorable transgressions is discussed, but, since in this case the artwork itself is the transgression, any argument that favors displaying the photograph carries no weight, especially when adult Robin imagines how some grown men may react to the image of her 15-year-old body that she clearly insisted she did not want photographed.

Though she possesses a lengthy list of film credits, this is director Avra Fox-Lerner's debut in live theatre. Most of her staging is static and lacking in energy, with actors standing in place while their characters carry on conversations. However, the contributions of intimacy director Judi Lewis Ockler are nuanced and well done.

Except for emotional surges. much of the dialogue was barely audible from my third row seat. During intermission, the two people sitting in front of me concurred they were also having trouble hearing the actors.

Though sound designer Ander Agudo provides subtle musical enhancement to some moments, the segments of time between the play's 19 scenes are all extended silent blackouts.

Describing his work in a press release, Terry Curtis Fox says, "This play poses a real (and deeply in the zeitgeist) dilemma for which there is no simple answer and yet one in which different people are quite convinced that they have the only answer." He adds, "It's a play that makes couples argue. It's a play of deep character. It does not let the audience off the hook or provide easy answers."

To this theatregoer, however, it amounts to little more than two hours of trying to bully a rape survivor into allowing herself to be publicly raped again and again for the sake of art and for the glory of her rapist.