How I Learned to Drive: This Caged Bird Sings

---

How I Learned to Drive: This Caged Bird Sings

The Hideout,

through September 2

There are several things that the State Theater Company's production of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, directed by Ken Webster, will not do ... and I feel I should tell you about them. I want to do this because, well, because I care about you, the reader, especially since you're considering becoming you-the-play's-audience. It's true: I've cared about you since before I started writing this review, and your best interests are what is always foremost in my mind. I'm experienced here, you see, and you won't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with, I promise, you absolutely get to draw the line, so please pay attention.

First, nota bene that the above paragraph is akin to the sweetly insistent way in which our young heroine, Li'l Bit, is coerced into carnal knowledge of her Uncle Peck by her Uncle Peck. Read that paragraph again, if you want, and roll it around in your mind a few times. Imagine that it's completely sincere, even, and see if that lessens its basic skeeviness by the slightest degree. While you're doing that, consider what effects the play will not have: How I Learned to Drive will not: 1) put you off driving or sexual relations for overly long; 2) leave you with nothing to talk about at the office or the salad bar the next day; or 3) make you wish you'd seen some movie instead. No, this disturbing and sometimes comedic drama will fulfill your desire for good theatre.

How I Learned to Drive won the Pulitzer Prize a couple years ago, and while you may argue with that selection, wondering of the possible politics involved behind the choosing and if maybe the childhood-sexual-abuse-as-dysfunctional-flavor-of-the-month trend in the arts around that time had anything to do with it, you can't deny that this is one powerful, compelling work. It's backboned by several folks from the Subterranean Theatre Company, too, in this case; which is, as usual, partly why it's so damned good.

The minimal set by James Barker is just that -- minimal -- so it has to be a function of script and acting (and even Buffy Manners' costuming) that had me visualizing whole complex arrangements of objects and decoration and automobiles as the scenes played out. But I guess that was mostly due to the acting: excellent, thoroughly believable performances by the whole ensemble, with Katherine Catmull as Li'l Bit, Thomas C. Parker as Uncle Peck, and Mary Agen Cox, David Jones, and Lara Toner making up a kind of Greek Chorus. (That's what the credits list them as: Greek Chorus.) The way these performers moved through and reacted to and inhabited the structured stage, you knew that on some not-too-far-submerged level they actually believed they were dealing with intricate surroundings that were only suggested by simple props. And they believed each other, too. Which is quite the trick -- but of course, that's the "trick" that all actors are supposed to pull, if they're going to do their jobs right -- because, well, it's onstage, after all, right? It's all nothing but a lie.

And that's the most chilling thing about this play, the thing that sets it apart. Like those actors doing such a good job because they substantially buy into the charade they're playing, the child-molesting Uncle Peck actually buys into his own good intentions. This character, unlike many such in other plays and other media, is not skeevy at all, in how he acts or what he says. (That's always such a dead giveaway, elsewhere. Like, of course, this guy is a pedophile: He's just basically a scuzball, you know? Dear Old Uncle Peck, however, Sweet & Caring Uncle Peck, though, he has the wool pulled farther over his own eyes than of those of his debauchees. He's fucking sincere, the pathetic pervert. And that's the extremely tearing thing about the play.) It's what he's doing, is all, that's wrong.

Catmull portrays Li'l Bit with such skill, and the writing is so well-wrought, that you feel humanly mixed sympathy and horror for her character, and a kind of low-level anger starts welling up in you, and you want to direct it violently toward The Villain. But poor Uncle Peck is too soft a target, and you end up wishing him merely removed instead of having thugs beat the shit out of him with baseball bats. This is admirable subtlety, here; this is how, as opposed to black/white crap in Movies of the Week or wherever, life sometimes is.

But, fear not, the show's not all angst and suffering. The Greek Chorus, while serving to illuminate the societal pressures and cultural setups facilitating the origin of such heinous situations, also mines the thick veins of humor in the various strata of our sexual mores. It's comic relief of an uproarious, laugh-until-you-thump-the-arms-of-your-chair sort, and it's as relieving as it is instructive. And if someone doesn't real quick-like cast David Jones and Mary Agen Cox as husband and wife in some big comedy in this town, then there's something horribly wrong with the world; their eyebrows alone could take the place of many actors who flail themselves onstage for our supposed amusement.

And the play has a happy ending, even. Well, not as in Happily Ever After; you're not going to get much of that after you've been fondled and purblindly power-played by a much older uncle. But you're going to feel other than despair when the curtain closes; how nice for the audience; and how nice, at last, for Li'l Bit.