The SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Reckless isn’t your typical Christmas show, but you still get most of the trimmings–they’re just wrapped in a different color paper. Okay, that’s enough of the Christmas puns, maybe. In most Christmas shows or movies, A Christmas Carol and the Nativity being the models for nearly all of them, everything is resolved by Christmas morning; Jesus’ birth goes alright, Scrooge undergoes his change of character, and we get our Christmastime dose of peace, love, and joy. Reckless moves from the off-kilter to tragedy and eventually to holiday redemption. It may take twenty years or so, but the play still finds peace and reconciliation come Christmas.
Marianna Bassham nails her character Rachel’s spunky and garrulous exuberance and her other dominant trait, a dim intelligence under extreme duress. While I could handle her for about an hour–before her aphonia set in–one sees why her husband Tom (Barlow Adamson) takes a hit out on her. It’s Tom’s confession to her, while the hit man is on his way up to their bedroom one Christmas Eve, that forces Rachel out the window and onto a prolonged and twisted adventure of self-discovery. And this isn’t even the only Christmas Eve on which she dodges death.
While some of the play’s humor can seem stale, some of the interludes out of place, and some of the choreography off-putting, it’s the cast’s delivery of Reckless’ dark humor and cutting satire that really brings this production home. It’s a treat to experience the guilty laughter that comes while Larry Coen, who plays Rachel’s saturnine but still magnanimous hero Lloyd, soberly describes how he inflicted brain damage on his son by running over him with a snow blower, drunk. Or to watch Paula Plum skillfully cycle through just about every incarnation of a therapist and parody of therapy you can imagine. Will McGarrahan, in two roles as a talk show host and non-profit bureaucrat, pushes the text’s satire to its uttermost boundary and so does Sandra Heffley, as a cigarette smoking elf, crazy skell, and an introverted accountant with a few secrets up her sleeve. The play gushes irreverence, taking jabs at what is usually set out of bounds by political correctness–something we’ve come to expect from our holiday entertainment.
Cristina Todesco’s set of Alice in Wonderland-esque doors and inverted white plastic Christmas trees lit in various colors signal to us that we are in a place of the surreal and, from that first leap Rachel makes from her window, that something is askew. It also is probably the best use of Tap Lights I’ve ever seen. We watch Rachel pass through several Christmases, as she leaps from being a housewife whose husband does not accept her, to a succession of Springfields and therapists, as Candide-like tragedies prevent her from finding a home and as she is pursued by her own childhood tragedy, eventually falling into an utter and prolonged traumatic state, only to find redemption (for herself and us) years later when the play’s last Christmas comes ’round where finally for once, all the Christmas trees appear to be upright.
This production is difficult to judge, because it straddles the line between holiday show and not-a-holiday-show. One isn’t certain what criteria to apply. I feel it’s best considered as a play revived as a holiday show, and in this context and under Scott Edmiston’s direction, it serves its purpose well. While not as family-friendly and clean as some of the more traditional Christmastime entertainment options, or those that employ their conventions (e.g. the Huntington’s A Civil War Christmas), it is a hilarious holiday romp with some of our best local comic talent and one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
The play has been criticized for coming across as dated. The wacky tone of its plot and the brand of its satire is straight out of the 80s, but this outmoded character strikes me as being apt for this holiday revival, if only because so much of our Christmas entertainment, from movies to music to theater and television specials, typically has this same quality, whether it has been recently produced or not. Don’t we all still need our Christmastime doses of claymation movies, George Bailey & Clarence Odbody, and Bing Crosby? Don’t our teen idols sing the same songs Nat King Cole did? Perhaps it’s these anachronisms that make holiday joy believable. An American Christmas is just as much about kitsch and nostalgia as it is tradition and Reckless, with it’s 1980s character odyssey, bad outfits, and references to Lotus Notes, seems appropriately out of the past.
SpeakEasy’s Reckless by Graig Lucas, directed by Scott Edmiston. Through December 12th at the BCA. Tickets about $50; $14 student rush.
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I was able to catch this great holiday nugget last week! Will McGarrahan is a hoot just standing there.
Mike