It’s not my practice to rail into student and fringe productions, because I think that when everyone’s working for free and they’re practically giving away tickets, they just don’t deserve it. It’s more important to describe what they’re doing, rather than what they’re not doing. That’s not to say that I don’t often see student (undergraduate and graduate) and fringe shows produced to exceptional standards that rival many of our local blockbuster productions. But, shows that come out of the MFA theater cycle of students, teachers, and more unemployed theater-people (which is really a post unto itself) should be held to professional standards, because, ideally, everyone involved is or is practically a professional and not training for a career in food service.
I think Boston Center for American Performance (under the umbrella of BU’s School of Theatre) aspires to professional standards, and in many areas of their production of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive they are there, but there are some major problems with this production of a play that’s not easy to do right. Vogel’s text is inherently ambiguous in sex and love and all those other things that matter, so it’s difficult for actors and directors to nail it with precision–to balance the cringe-inducing trauma with the humor, the love and spirituality with the cynicism. Moreover, Vogel’s brand of feminism was already a historical artifact when How I Learned to Drive first premiered in 1997 anyways, and when Li’l Bit’s character is projected onto another young actress, it only seems more distant.
While I admire some of the choices director Tara A. Matkosky and her crew and staff has made here, some of them just don’t mesh as well as one would like them to. We get car-radio sound design by Andrew Duncan Will that’s nothing short of excellent, but I really could have gone without the use of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Maps at the end–accompanying a powerful, almost physical, show-stopping lighting flourish (Annie Weigand). It’s anachronistic to all the Janice Joplin that scores the rest of the play. While I recognize the feminist/historical parallel that’s being attempted here, as well as the need for music with a little bit of thrust, it feels too much like a tweeny update.
It’s a small gripe, but it connects to a larger one, because Alicia Hunt (Li’l Bit) is more of a Karen O than a Joplin. As the play hops between the sixties and the seventies, Hunt always seems too either too old or too young. She gives intelligent and committed deliveries of her monologues, with a strong sense of Vogel’s poetry, but her character’s toughness, intelligence, and cynicism is unnaturally affected. She brings a worldliness and intelligence to the role that successfully sets her (along with Puck) apart from the rest of her family and peers, but she lacks the depth of character veteran Mark Cohen (Puck) brings to the table.
Alicia Hunt (Li'l Bit) & Mark Cohen (Peck) (BU Photography)
This production wisely avoids turning the play into a montage of unsettling moral transgressions and aims a little deeper than simply tugging at the strings of our moral faculties as it plays with different scenarios and different levels of information, testing our ability to judge. Though the set (Caitlin Fergus), a Flavin-esque line of diffused fluorescent light that runs down the wall of the theater, along the ground, and almost to the door, signals at some kind of moral line that can (and will) be crossed, BCAP’s production doesn’t rely too heavily on it. Puck and Li’l Bit’s relationship can’t be defined or placed, it can only be reduced.
Despite the set’s clear demarcation, nothing is clear, but, as wrong as this love is, this production shows it as True, and somehow beautiful. The set’s line is avoided (or maybe floated upon) by the play. It skips nudity, explicit touching, much innuendo, and exaggerated flirtation. In the final scene, Hunt doesn’t herself sit in Peck’s lap, but instead narrates from the side, while a female ensemble member sits. Peck and Li’l Bit are usually seated apart in their chairs, facing each other, rather than next to each other. This signals at a sincerity between them, instead of a dirty slyness on Peck’s part, as his hand creeps up the back of his niece’s seat. Even the initial cringe factor of their first scene together has its volume turned down because they’re so far apart.
John Zdrojeski is the production’s comic star (and comedy is important here) as the male ensemble cast member, playing a richly acted grandpa and even breaking out the guitar for one scene. I’d like to see some more from him.
Through February 27 @ the Boston University Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210 (264 Huntington Ave). Tickets: $20, $10 students, seniors, BU ID.
