RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN
RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN, Ensemble Theatre, 6 November-7 December 2013. Photography by Steve Lunam. Chloe Baylis, Diane Craig and Georgie Parker (above) and Chloe Bayliss (right).
The title of this new (2013) work by American playwright Gina Gionfriddo is perplexing in the extreme unless you're a fan of Courtney Love and/or Hole, in which case you'd know it's a line from their song Use Once and Destroy. In retrospect it makes a sardonic sort of sense because Love, at 49, is the train wreck, once was a warrior chick that Catherine (Georgie Parker) might hum along to. And she'd hear echoes of a proudly misspent youth and try to ignore how faint the sound now is.
Catherine and Gwen (Anne Tenney) are the yin and yang of the "women can have everything" argument of the second wave of feminism. Catherine is a famous TV academic and writer - hello Naomi Wolf - and years ago left behind Don (Glenn Hazeldine) to pursue her ambitions. Gwen, on the other hand, gave up hers to snaffle Don, have kids and be a homemaker. It quickly becomes apparent that if they're being honest, which is not their intention, each envies the other, the grass being greener, etc.
This classy play has been successful across the USA and Variety recently pronounced Gionfriddo "a genius". That's possibly because she has chosen to tackle the "F" word and also do it as a comedy. Variety, of course, would be only too aware that feminists have no sense of humour. Rapture, Blister, Burn is therefore, clever, tricksy - and entertaining - but a bit of a tease in its loftier ambitions.
So, Catherine is back from New York to take care of her mother Alice (Diane Craig) who's had a heart attack. The near-death fright has caused Catherine to examine her own life and she finds it wanting. She has pretty much everything she aimed for but suddenly, here's her old love Don and he's still looking cute. In the mean time, small town academe has mired a willing Don in his own pot-hazed lethargy. Life is tooth-achingly dull and Catherine is still looking exciting.
Catherine is not the catalyst for change, however, instead it's Avery (Chloe Bayliss), a sweetly cynical innocent, a college drop-out with dreams and a boyfriend who gives her a black eye. The politically incorrect bruising gets her the sack from her job child-minding for Gwen and, just to prove that nothing coincides like coincidence, she and Gwen turn out to be Catherine's only two students for a summer school class.
Discontent and disappointment underly the political and philosophical verbal ping-pong tournament that gets underway between the women - fuelled by Alice's martinis, brought out at what's supposed to be the end of each class. Avery is classically post-feminist and potty-mouthed to boot while Catherine is expansively sophisticated and so Gwen spends a lot of time sucking metaphorical lemons.
Gionfriddo is handy with the razor-edged commentary and dialogue of the kind made delicious by generations of American female writers from Dorothy Parker to Nora Ephron. If director Sandra Bates had upped the pace the play's naturally sharp and witty rhythms would become more apparent, perhaps it will tighten as the season goes on. As it is there are not as many laughs from the audience in the first half as there are in the script and characters, but it gets a move on after the interval.
Catherine comes up with a variation on wife-swapping - Gwen and her teenage son will go stay in Catherine's New York apartment so he can go to musicals and Gwen can go back to college, while Catherine and Don look after the toddler and continue where they left off a couple of decades back - including the pot and booze. In an ongoing classroom wrangle that somehow puts Phyllis Schlafly on the right side of history, this turns out to be not so far fetched - in a nonsensical, bittersweet way.
Rapture, Blister, Burn has a lot going for it, not least the performances by each member of the cast. Georgie Parker is so at ease as Catherine you almost want to join in the class discussions with her; Anne Tenney's Gwen is slyly, passively aggressive in contrast to Diane Craig's worldly but resigned and gentle Alice. Glenn Hazeldine maintains a fine balance between laidback and supine and it's easy to see why he's both attractive and marooned. Revelation of the night is Chloe Bayliss - more grown up than any of the others at the beginning, with eyes wider and heart still hopeful, yet by the end what began as a facade of brittle world-weariness is in place as the real thing. It's a touching and funny mixture and she manages it beautifully.
Rapture, Blister, Burn is entertaining and occasionally illuminating and a good candidate for a girls' night out - for girls of all ages.
