L-R: Natalie Neckyfarow and Brandon Walker in BOY'S LIFE. Photo by Russ Rowland. |
Now
in its sixth season, The Seeing Place, located on East 26th Street in Manhattan,
is currently staging two exceptional revivals in repertory: Boy’s Life by Howard Korder and Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman. It is the juxtaposition of these two plays,
both focusing on gender relations, that resonates synergistically to enhance
our appreciation of both.
Boy’s Life was originally
produced in 1988, garnering a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize nomination at the
time, but comes across as somewhat dated today.
Those were the pre-PC days, you may recall, when “no” meant “maybe,”
“maybe” meant “yes,” and “nice girls” simply couldn’t be expected to actually
say “yes” outright. It was then that the
idea that “boys will be boys” was well nigh acceptable and young women were
taught to be wary of post-adolescent men only a few years out of college who
might use any ruse – from lying to alcohol – to lure them into bed.
Three
such men are Jack (Brandon Walker), Don (Alex Witherow), and Phil (Logan
Keeler) who have evolved from being “campus cut-ups to wasted potentials” and
who attempt to continue to live lives centering on cheap beer, drugs, and
sexual conquests. Jack is married to
Carla (Candice Oden) and has a son but he doesn’t allow those minor details to
stop him from attempting to pick up Maggie (Natalie Neckyfarow), nor from borrowing
Phil’s or Don’s apartment to facilitate his afternoon trysts.
Phil
and Don are a bit more sensitive than Jack (who is clearly the alpha male in
the group) but both of them are just as much on the make. Phil will say almost anything if he thinks it
might enable him to re-connect with Karen (Mary Ruth Baggott) – and if he can cop
a feel in the process, so much the better.
Don hooks up with Lisa (Brisa Frietas), a waitress and aspiring
sculptress, and ultimately falls in love with her, but even that doesn’t
prevent him from engaging in a one night stand with another mentally unstable girl
(Olivia Baseman).
The
play unfolds as a series of brief vignettes rather than as a linear story line
and is most effective in doing so. After
90 minutes of this, a full picture has emerged, reflecting the playwright’s
view of men behaving badly. Despite its
being somewhat dated, Boy’s Life is
still a thought-provoking and funny play.
And it provides a wonderful prelude to the even more powerful Boy Gets Girl that succeeds it.
L-R: John D'Arcangelo and Erin Cronican in BOY GETS GIRL. Photo by Russ Rowland. |
Boy Gets Girl was first produced in
2000 (by which time it should have been understood that “no” meant “no” even if
the world was not quite ready to accept today’s ultra-PC and
romance-suffocating “yes” means “yes” standard). It was acclaimed by Time Magazine as the “Best Play of the Year” and I can readily see
why.
In
this excellent revival, Theresa Bedell (Erin Cronican), a highly intelligent
and talented journalist, reluctantly agrees to go out on a blind date with Tony
Ross (Daniel Michael Perez). Their brief
meeting goes well enough and she agrees to meet him again for dinner but,
before that second encounter reaches its conclusion, she realizes that she has
made a mistake and attempts to end their relationship. It is not that she perceives anything
particularly wrong with Tony; it is just that she doesn’t think that they have
enough in common to justify the expenditure of her time when she’d rather
devote herself to her career.
But
Tony is not on Theresa’s wavelength and does not realize that “no” really does
mean “no,” even as regards such mundane matters as meeting for a drink or
dinner. He persists in his attempts to
woo her, telephoning incessantly, sending unwanted flowers on a daily basis,
showing up unexpectedly at her office.
His persistence escalates to obsession, from that to stalking and,
ultimately, to the most pathologically threatening behavior.
Theresa
enlists the aid of her hapless secretary, Harriet (Emily Newhouse); of her
boss, Howard Siegel (Einar Gunn); and of her co-worker, Mercer Stevens (Brandon
Walker), but all to no avail. Eventually
she turns to the police as well and Detective Beck (Virginia Gregory) manages
to assist her in establishing an alternate life for herself – one free of Tony
but less than ideal.
Erin
Cronican (who not only plays the lead role in Boy Gets Girl but also directed Boy’s Life) is absolutely sensational as Theresa. She perfectly epitomizes the successful
feminist in today’s world who finds herself forced to balance a variety of
different relationships, including not only those with Tony, Harriet, Mercer
and Howard but also that which develops between her and Les Kennkat (John
D’Arcangelo), a successful director of soft-core films featuring big-breasted
women. Much of the success of this
production must be attributed to her performance.
That
is not to deny that Ms Cronican has been very ably supported in this production
by the other members of The Seeing Place Theater’s ensemble cast. Especially noteworthy are Mr. Gunn who plays
the role of Howard with just the sort of paternalistic concern that Ed Asner
brought to his relationship with Mary in the Mary Tyler Moore Show; Mr. D’Arcangelo, who manages to convey both
sensitivity and smarminess in his role as Les; and Mr. Walker, who exhibits the
range of his talent by bringing to his role of Mercer so much more restraint
than was called for in his role as Jack in Boy’s
Life (and, incidentally, who also directed Boy Gets Girl).
Mr.
Korder, Ms. Gilman and The Seeing Place Theater all do seem to have predicated
these plays on two assumptions with which I don’t necessarily agree. The first is that male attitudes toward women
are almost entirely a function of nurture or conditioning, rather than nature
or genetics – that is, that men are attracted to women with large breasts
because they have been conditioned by men like Len Kennkat to find large
breasts attractive, not that men like Len Kennkat create the films they do,
featuring women with big breasts because that is what men want to see. In support of that contention, they cite such
examples as the appeal of women with small feet among the Chinese or of women
with long necks among some African tribes.
Surely, it is argued, such fetishes must be a result of conditioning,
not genetics; otherwise they would be universal.
And
certainly there is merit to that argument.
But the more we learn about evolution, it seems to me, the more we
realize that more of our likes and dislikes than we ever imagined do have an
evolutionary basis in the survival of our species, and I would have liked to have
seen that alternative addressed rather than dismissed out of hand.
The
second point on which I tend to disagree is with the plays’ implication that
all men are on a spectrum when it comes to mistreating women – that the only
difference between men like Jack and Don and Phil who are continually seeking
to bed women, on the one hand, and psychopaths like Tony, on the other, is one
of degree, not of kind. To that end, in
a very clever bit of casting, Brandon Walker appears as the insensitive,
philandering Jack who attempts to conceal his marital state from Maggie in Boy’s Life and then as the much more
sensitive and honorable Mercer in Boy
Gets Girl. But what I believe that
is meant to suggest is that maybe they’re really not so different: after all, why did Mercer neglect to tell
Theresa he was married for so long? And
did you see the way he was massaging her shoulders? Finally there is the coup de grace as Mercer
admits that the thought of sleeping with Theresa had, indeed, once flashed
before his mind. Obviously, he’s no
better than Jack. (It’s all rather
reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate statement to the effect that “I’ve
looked at many women with lust. I’ve
committed adultery in my heart many times,” isn’t it?)
Sorry,
but I can’t buy it. Mercer’s not on the
same spectrum as Jack but, even if he is, neither is on the same spectrum with
Tony. Men may behave badly in many
different ways and to many different degrees, but psychopaths and stalkers are
in an entirely different league. This is
the same objection that I have to the unfortunate tendency in today’s world to
conflate rape with sexual harassment. To
be sure, sexual harassment is reprehensible but it isn’t rape and any attempt
to conflate the two only trivializes the true horror of rape itself.
But
I digress. Whatever differences I might
have with the playwrights or The Seeing Place Theater regarding their
interpretations of male behavior, the fact remains that these are their plays,
their ideas, and their productions, not mine, and they have every right to
present them as they see fit. And so
they have – and most effectively, with considerable power and humor, I might
add. These are productions very much
worth seeing.
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