Key Exchange

By Kevin Wade

Book Overview

THE STORY: The scene is a bicycle path in Central Park, where three young cyclists come together each weekend. Philip, an aspiring novelist, is having an affair with Lisa, a photographer, while... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000OKUHY0
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Nelson Doubleday
• Length: 81 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The daunting threat of exchanging keys in the modern world

"Key Exchange" was something of an off-Broadway success in the early 1980s. Kevin Wades play is about the New York swinging singles scene in general and the problems of Philip, his girlfriend Lisa, and the newly married Michael. The trio gets together each weekend to go bicycling in Central Park and deal with the eternal issue of commitment versus freedom. Philip wants to keep laying the field, so he is trying to avoid any serious commitment to Lisa, who, of course, secretly years for an exclusive relationship. They bike together, date a few times each week, sleep together, and they might even love each other. But they are the modern cosmopolitan couple, which means they can date other people whenever they want and have "freedom." Since Michael has just gotten married he is the stout defender of monogamy, although his advice tends towards metaphors like "why go out for a hamburger when you can have a steak at home?" Besides, his authority on the matter is seriously undercut when we learn his wife has run off with another man; apparently she was not happy to be married to a man who goes off to the park to race his bicycle against a young unmarried woman each weekend. The title comes from Lisa's suggestion that she and Philip exchange keys to each other's apartments. Her proposal is that they "give it a go as a couple for a while, see what happens." But all Philip can think of is that he would bring some other woman back to his place and at the pivotal moment Lisa would walk in (it take him a while to think that he might be able to do the same thing to her). Not surprisingly, it turns out that this cosmopolitan couple is not as modern as they both believe. The idea of a key exchange ends up being simply an example of a lower threshold than actually living together, in terms of a major hurdle in the life of the modern couple. In the end the characters essentially end up back where they were in the first place, although we hope they are certainly wiser. Overall in Wade's play the wit outweighs the wisdom, but then the commitment issue is not exactly new, on or off Broadway. This is a three character play with an exterior set, and in 1985 was made into a less than adequate film with Ben Masters, Brooke Adams, and Daniel Stern by soap opera director Barnet Kellman.