Bad loo tenants: Paul Nugent and Laoisa Sexton in Ladies & Gents Aaron Epstein Ladies & Gents Written and directed by Paul Walker Bethesda Fountain Toilets, Central Park 212-868-4444 more theater most popular most commented Unsettled Sightlines by Michelle Orange John Turturro's Does Beckett Hamm I Am by Alexis Soloski Three New Productions Tackle Color Lines by Michael Feingold Vengeance Can Wait: A Short-Lived Joy Sightlines by Alexis Soloski Yellow Moon's ADD Drama by GARRETT EISLER NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit by Sean Gardiner Why Can't I Leave My Boyfriend Tied Up While I Go the Movies? Savage Love by Dan Savage Speed Racer by J. Hoberman The NYPD's Secret Crusade Against Marijuana Furthers a Racist Agenda by Nat Hentoff Mass Arrests at Sean Bell Protest NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (8) Sean Gardiner Former Scientologist Actor Wants his Confessional Files Back (8) Tony Ortega Dirty Blonde: Brooklyn, a Place to Impress Strangers (4) Dirty Blonde: Annie Fischer David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (3) David Mamet Mr. Roboto: Fits to Print (3) Mr. Roboto: Brendan I. Koerner

It would not be unreasonable for audience members at Paul Walker's site-specific  Ladies & Gents to suspect that they are about to die. After an unsmiling Irishman orders us not to move from our allotted positions, actors whip out guns and meat cleavers with the air of flag-waving revelers on St. Patrick's Day. And as we wipe the blood of a beheaded whore off our cheeks, it may occur to us that the production's unlikely location—Central Park's Bethesda Fountain bathrooms, swathed in March fog—means that if the worst happened, no one would know where to look for us.

This daringly staged and structured work about sex and murder recreates a 1957 Dublin scandal involving, of all things, a politician and a prostitute. Before the show—created by Semper Fi (Ireland) and imported by the Irish Arts Center—the audience splits in half; one group crowds into the women's bathroom, the other into the men's. Two 20-minute dramas play out simultaneously, re-enacting a prostitute's death at the hands of a man who claims to enjoy rest-room rendezvous (in the Ladies'), and revealing the reasons for his act (in the Gents'). Then audience members swap locations and the scenes repeat. The actors perform their noirish playlets with pitch-perfect staginess, yet the most engaging character is the set itself: Like the people who loiter in them, these mud-tracked, malodorous lavatories dabble with the distinctions between private and public, hidden and exposed, clean and filthy. No luck of the Irish for these desolate Dubliners.