The muse of drama is no stranger to plays that inspire audiences to laugh or cry, but she probably isn't as familiar with the kind of play that makes an audience a bit squeamish. However, Christopher Durang, an award-winning playwright, has perfected the art of making audiences squirm with his taste and talent for bringing the unsettling to the stage. Last Thursday, Durang's "Betty's Summer Vacation" (nominated for a Drama Desk award) opened in Theater~Intime with a flourish of dismembered genitals.
Though "Betty's Summer Vacation," directed by John Vennema '04, begins much like any other pilgrimage to the beach, it soon strays from the stereotypical summer vacation. Durang's absurdity surfaces in the form of exaggerated sitcom-like characters. For example, Keith (Jeffrey Kitrosser '03), the shy and sensitive guy, is actually a serial killer who decapitates his victims with a shovel. Another character – the token alpha male, named Butch (Austin Saypol '04) – is sexually aroused twenty times a day and has a photo album filled with pictures of his own phallus. Following in Durang's tradition of the bizarre, the grisly episodes of the play are accompanied by a laugh track, and voices in the ceiling talk to the characters, nominating them for People's Choice Awards.
In "Betty's Summer Vacation," Durang has created a pseudo-Greek tragedy with a modern twist. The three Voices (Ben Beckley '03, Emily Mitchell '03 and Salman Butt '03) serve as a Greek chorus, bridging the gap between the audience and the actors. They express an exaggerated version of the audience's desires by laughing at the morbid rather than the conventionally funny and by urging the characters to give into their violent or sexual whims. These voices (much like the audience itself) want nothing but to be constantly entertained.
Butch's sexual innuendos and Mr. Vinslaw's (Micah Baskir '03) role as the local flasher/rapist entertain the audience through their lascivious natures. Trudy (Liz Berg '04) and Keith pique the audience's curiosity with their histories of molestation. The contrasting performances of Berg and Kitrosser bring a dynamic energy to the violence of "Betty's Summer Vacation."
As the various characters arrive at the beach house to make use of their time shares, it becomes clear that they aren't quite your typical sitcom stereotypes. Trudy doesn't show any sign of remorse when her mother (Vanessa Rodriguez '03 informs her that her father (who molested Trudy when she was a child) is dead. However, Trudy does decide to lust after Keith, who is allegedly sensitive and was also molested as a child, but is just a creepy individual. The other plotlines involve Butch who, has a hard time taking Trudy and Betty's "no's" as their final answers to his scurrilous questions, and Mr. Vanislaw, clad in only a tattered trench coat and Nike sneakers, accepting an invitation to dinner.
Following a rousing (and out-of-the-ordinary) game of charades after dinner, Mr. Vanislaw rapes Trudy, who reacts with a Lorena Bobbitt-inspired act of violence and severs his phallus with a kitchen knife. Keith follows suit and chops off Mr. Vanislaw's head. When Trudy finishes prancing across stage waving Mr. Vanislaw's severed genitalia, they head to the police station. After they all return, Trudy's mother conducts a mock trial for her daughter to amuse the three Voices in an impressive display of versatility.
As the mayhem of dismemberment, rape, and sexual thirst blazes its trail across the stage, Betty (Rachel Koblic '04) and the Voices lend continuity to the wacky elements of the play. As the episodes of the play become exponentially more bizarre, Koblic gives a solid performance as the voice of reason. While the Voices grow increasingly more insistent in their demand to be entertained, Koblic fights harder to preserve some semblance of sanity. As the chaos escalates, the quaintly designed beach house (Devon Wessman-Smerdon '05, set design, and Sarah Rodriguez '03, master carpenter) remains virtually unchanged, providing a static playground for the strange goings-on of the characters.
"Betty's Summer Vacation" opens with a hint of the peculiar and, as it progresses, is punctuated by the gory dismemberment, a character vomiting in a sink, and the Voices actually falling through the ceiling to join the characters on stage in a final showdown between reason and lunacy. As they whip through the mock trial, the action of the play culminates in an epiphany (you'll have to see the play to find out just what that is) and pretty much ends in a bang. Literally. So, hold tight to your seats, and brace yourself for a funny and enjoyable, albeit riddled with blood and gore, evening.
"Betty's Summer Vacation"
Directed by John Vennema '04 September 26-28 at 8 p.m. September 28 at 2 p.m. For tickets, call (609) 258-1742 $12 general, $6 studentsRead More
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