Perhaps
the greatest achievement of Paula Vogel’s 1997 How I Learned to Drive—currently
having its first mainstream NYC revival courtesy of Second Stage—is its ability to seduce the audience into
thinking a child abuser isn’t as bad a fellow as he is sad, sincere, smart,
funny, tortured, misguided and lonely—a sophisticate displaced in a
backwoods society. And no, I’m not being arch or sarcastic.
In
this narrative of this memory play the adult woman who, growing up in a small
Southern town was called L’il Bit (Elizabeth Reaser), looks back upon her relationship with her Uncle
(by marriage) nicknamed Peck (Norbert Leo Butz), but not in chronological order. The play skips
around in the past, back and forth, as needed. We’re introduced first to the
things that make Peck genuinely attractive and sympathetic, that deny us the
easy privilege of seeing him as a monster; that rather, give us an insight into
how what I guess I’ll call “the gentle abusers” (as opposed to the violent
ones; violence is not Peck’s style at all) are seen by their victims. And with
the most minimal propping, and a “Greek chorus” of three (Kevin Cahoon, Jennifer Regan and Marnie Schulenburg
particularized in the program as Male, Female and Teenage respectively) playing
all other roles, the show proceeds, piece-by-piece, to build two deep
pathologies for two deep personalities, proving L’il Bit far less in control
than she seems at the beginning, and Peck far more insidious a menace than his
easy solicitousness (“We won’t do anything that you don’t want to do”) readily
betrays. In fact, it isn’t until the final puzzle piece is in place that
inappropriate dysfunction becomes the stuff of a child’s—a
woman’s—lifelong neuroses. And by then it’s too late, for we’ve been
seduced too. And share the child’s difficulty in reconciling the monster with
the man we know as only sad, sincere, smart, funny, tortured, misguided and
lonely.
What’s
even more astonishing is how persuasive this seduction remains, even if you’re
familiar with the play. A testament to the writing, of course—but no less
so to this new production, directed by Kate Whoriskey,
in which the always remarkable Norbert Leo Butz dazzles with his sheer,
uncompromising and fearless committment to his character's
agenda; and Elizabeth Reaser is perhaps somewhat more daring in
her portrayal of L'il Bit than we've seen before; she is likewise
unafraid to portray her character's sexual ambivalence…by which I mean
the temptation to enable Peck and fall under his spell for good. Given
that her face and figure suggest unequivocal voluptuousness, this is an incredibly bold choice, and in
the best theatrical sense, it adds danger to the proceedings. Which
creates a wonderful balancing act against the play's gentility.
How I Learned to Drive remains Paula Vogel's best play, and at
Second Stage it has a production that would have been worthy of its
debut. Not many revivals fare so well in the shadow of recent memory…
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