Only a man could write a play where the only action involves one man standing around talking about how men don't talk very much.

Such is the case in this season's first Bermuda Festival offering - an amusing and thought-provoking one man play called ‘Defending the Caveman'.

The one man in this case was Chris Sullivan, a California native who has appeared in ‘Macbeth', ‘Twelfth Night' and ‘Portia Coughlan', among others.

‘Defending the Caveman' was written by comedian Rob Becker over a period of three years during which time he made an informal study of anthropology, prehistory, and various other ‘ologies'.

The setting of ‘Defending the Caveman' was straight forward, some cave paintings on the wall, ritual dirty underwear on the floor, a chair, and of course, a television set.

Mr. Sullivan uses this simple set to give an excellent, and funny portrayal of the hapless prehistoric and modern male (they are really the same person).

To see this play you really must go with someone of the opposite gender, because it opens up dialogue.

Woman: “What did you think of the play?”

Man: Shrug. “Uh... I don't know. If we hurry we could catch another rerun of Seinfeld.”

Woman: “No, no, how did it make you feel...”

‘Defending the Caveman' suggests that the differences and misunderstandings between men and women are cultural and arise from our prehistoric pasts where men hunted and women gathered pretty berries.

Apparently, men don't like to talk because noise wasn't useful on a hunt.

This explains why women like to shop, and talk about their feelings.

According to Mr. Becker men speak about 3,000 fewer words than women during the course of a day. (I'm sure Mr. Becker is over his quota in this play.)

Sometimes Mr. Becker's theories, though tempting, break down in the cold light of the parking lot.

For instance, the idea that men don't like to browse in a mall falls apart when you take a man into a DVD store. Do we need every Rocky movie ever made?

Nevertheless, ‘Defending the Caveman' is the kind of play where you think, ‘has this guy been hiding out in my house?

How does Mr. Becker know this stuff about us?

How does he know that I always know where my husband's keys are and that I feel offended when my husband leaves his jacket on the couch instead of neatly hung up (even though I have three of my own laying around)'.

Mr. Becker claims that women go for the details more than men, but he ruins his own point by doing so well at picking out the minutia of daily marital ‘bliss', and the nuances of male and female body language.

The down side was that the play had a slightly dated feel to it. ‘Defending the Cavemen' is one of the longest running plays in Broadway history.

It opened at the Helen Hayes theatre on Broadway ten years ago, and its vitality is beginning to sag.

The play opens with Janet Jackson singing ‘Love will Never Do (without you)' and ended with something that sounded equally prehistoric.

Jessie Moniz