FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| Theatre by Nikki Sheppy Preview In ATP’s production of How I Learned to Drive, actors Lindsay Burns and Esther Purves-Smith play characters with two very different perspectives on a troubling incestuous relationship. Burns plays L’il Bit, a precocious young woman who feels misunderstood by everyone in her family except her Uncle Peck. The only problem is that she knows only too well how wrong their relationship is. As a member of the Female Chorus, Purves-Smith plays Bit’s grandmother, a woman married at 14, who, like the rest of the family, has no room in her own hard life for sympathy. It’s a challenging premise and one that might easily flounder in hands less skilled than those of playwright Paula Vogel, the 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winner. Yet Burns and Purves-Smith agree that How I Learned to Drive is a funny, creepy, sexy and deeply human play. At once a love story and a coming-of-age story, it examines the complexities of a woman who, through a series of metaphorical driving lessons, finally learns to direct her own life. "The play isn’t called ‘How My Life Was Ruined,’" notes Burns. "It’s called ‘How I Learned to Drive.’ It is ultimately a very positive message about coming through something and releasing it.... You learn to drive when you’re coming of age sexually, so Paula Vogel has put these two together. And one of the functions of the chorus is to lead the play through driving instructions." Purves-Smith concurs. "Driving is an analogy for Bit’s journey. As the chorus, we function almost as counsel to Bit and also as liaison with the audience." According to Burns, one of the play’s strengths is the tension Vogel’s structure gives the story. Moving from shock to laughter and back again, it portrays a taboo relationship that nevertheless defies easy condemnation. "It’s not black and white," says Burns. "Peck isn’t just a monster. He offers Bit a lot of good things too." "The play isn’t about some creep or about a victim – it’s about a relationship," adds Purves-Smith. "There are some difficult things to watch. It would be so easy to judge the situation, and you maybe want to, but you can’t. Doing the play, I often found myself being saddened by things or disturbed by things, but I also couldn’t judge them – which was a real challenge." Bit calls her family members "crackers." They live in suburban Maryland, an uneducated, dysfunctional bunch who can’t relate to Bit, the first among them to go to university – on scholarship. "I think they come from a long line of difficulties," says Purves-Smith. "The women nickname one another after their genitalia. In a sense, there’s an acceptance of sexuality but, certainly in the women, a displeasure with it. Everything is extreme. It’s terrible. It’s fabulous. Men suck, but actually we’re really passionate about them." Both actors agree that among the most disturbing aspects of the play is the enabling behaviour of Bit’s family. None of the adults accepts responsibility for what they suspect is happening. Instead, they lay that burden squarely on Bit’s young shoulders. In a family where nothing is upfront, Bit pays the ultimate price, but she also manages to reclaim her life before it can steer her towards disaster. Theatre Preview Actors Paul Gatchell and Ian Simpson have worked together before, but never as an unlikely gay couple. In Falsettos, a two-time Tony Award-winning musical by William Finn and James Lapine, Gatchell plays Marvin, a recently divorced man looking for the stability of a "normal" relationship while exploring his nascent homosexuality, and Simpson plays Whizzer, a promiscuous gay man who can’t quite commit to Marvin’s idea of what love should be. The story gets complicated when Marvin recommends that his ex-wife, Trina, go see his psychiatrist. When these two fall in love in a classic case of transference, Marvin’s son, Jason, winds up in therapy with the dubiously qualified doctor. In Act Two, as Whizzer falls ill, we encounter yet another alternative family, the only stable one in the play – two lesbians, one a doctor and the other a kosher caterer. For ATP, Falsettos is clearly a forum for pondering the meaning and variety of family. "In the last few decades, we’ve really come to question what family means," says Simpson. "Is it really a husband, wife, two kids and a dog? In our show, it’s not. We really redefine that concept." For Gatchell, this issue is closely tied to the equal rights debates that have recently peppered the news. "One of the lines in the song at the top of Act Two is ‘It’s about time,’" says Gatchell. "And I think it is about time, in terms of examining who we are and allowing other people to be who they are. Everybody has the right to family and the right to create their own kind of family. Other people truly can’t impose their will on it. "It’s important, I think, for people to look at families that aren’t necessarily ma and pa relationships, but are loving, compatible relationships – or that suffer the same problems as any other relationship." That said, Gatchell admits that in Falsettos his character isn’t the easiest guy to live with. "Marvin is definitely not likable, at least not in the first act. He’s very self-centred and controlling. His ideal, which he tries to impose on everybody, is that they’ll all still form a family. He wants everybody to be happy living under one roof. It’s destructive to all the relationships, but it especially drives Trina crazy." One of the problems in the love-hate relationship between Marvin and Whizzer is how differently they conceive of their bond. "Whizzer is preoccupied with things in life like clothes and the way he looks and men who have money," says Simpson of his character. "In Act One, it’s 1979 and essentially pre-AIDS, so Whizzer is also very promiscuous. In terms of their relationship, he certainly isn’t looking for anything monogamous, whereas Marvin is looking for more of a commitment." For the two men, it’s a long journey to discovering what real love entails. The action is set to a challenging, non-stop musical score that draws them together in a number of songs, including a falsetto duet. For Simpson, whose character contracts AIDS in Act Two (written almost 10 years after Act One), the play also contains an important reminder. "Falsettos reminds us of what it was like in the world at that time, in the ’70s and ’80s when the AIDS crisis was just breaking. Now it’s 20 years later and in a lot of ways it seems we’ve become complacent about the disease. But it’s still a very important issue. People are still dying and there’s still no cure for it." Theatre Popcorn There are bound to be a few people who find ATP’s spring series of plays a bit shocking. They are understatedly billed as "startling," after all, so no one should really be that surprised to see a few tough issues tackled. On the surface Ben Elton’s play Popcorn – an examination of film violence – seems to be the least controversial of the three. But on closer inspection, it may turn out to be the hardest to pin down. "The other two plays have resolutions, have answers, and if anything, this is the one play that doesn’t," says Victor A. Young, who appears in both Popcorn and Falsettos. "Now, the answers might not be satisfactory to everybody in the other two plays, but they do provide possible solutions to the problems. This one doesn’t. This one just asks the big question and then tosses the ball to the audience." The big question, according to Young and his co-star, Ryan Luhning, is one of accountability. Young plays Bruce Delamitri, a maverick film director whose movies employ a violence that has become familiar to contemporary audiences. Luhning is Wayne, a killer whose cross-country swath of murder echoes one of Bruce’s films. When Wayne takes Bruce hostage and asks him to acknowledge his role in the crimes, they find themselves at the centre of a debate that seems to have no easy answers. "No one wants to take responsibility," Luhning says. "Bruce can’t take responsibility, because if he does, his career is over. If Wayne takes responsibility, he fries in the electric chair." The question is, have Bruce’s films contributed to the violence in society, or do they merely reflect it? Elton’s script refuses to allow for an easy assignment of blame, Luhning says. Wayne and his partner, Scout, are not simple targets. "They’re supposed to be sort of poor white trash, and we tend to think of them as not very smart, but that’s too easy," Luhning says. "They’re actually very intelligent people.... Their point is that Bruce has made them the way they are." Young adds that the arguments Wayne and Scout present to justify their actions are often the same ones that opponents of television violence use to support their actions. "It’s easy to say, ‘This guy is white trash from nowheresville, and he’s shooting people up, so he should be put away.’ But he starts spouting arguments that we’ve all used, to justify his position. And if we say those arguments are not valid for him, then they can’t be valid for us, so then where does that leave us?" Elton’s play brings movie fans face to face with the issue by using familiar stereotypes. "He has a Quentin Tarantino – Bruce – and he has a Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers," Luhning points out. "He uses these stereotypes so that you look at these characters and you feel like you know them." The stereotypes leave the audience free to focus on the philosophical conflict between the two men, but the literal debate takes place late in the play, and doesn’t get bogged down in theory. The two actors agree that the key to the play’s appeal is the way in which it ironically uses the language and the devices of violent television and films in order to make its point. "This could be a movie the like of which we’re talking about," Young says. "(Elton) uses exactly the form that he’s skewering to present his argument." |
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