Tuesday , March 19 2024
Amy Brenneman stars as Playwrights Horizons calls on the deities and demons of feminism, from Freud and Nancy Friday to Phyllis Schlafly.

Theater Review (NYC): ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’ by Gina Gionfriddo

In her intelligent, slickly entertaining yet warm-hearted new play Rapture, Blister, Burn, Gina Gionfriddo (Becky Shaw) uses the trappings of academia to strip away the academic pretensions of the legacy of the feminist movement and lay bare instead some of its never-resolved pains and twists.

Catherine (Amy Brenneman, TV’s Judging Amy) is one of that rare breed, the modern popular intellectual, a star of the lecture and Real Time with Bill Maher circuit riding high on her books, which pull trendy topics like torture porn into the ambit of academia. In her early 40s, single, child-free, and driven, she has taken a sabbatical from her trendy New York City life to return to New England and care for her aging but still-scheming mother Alice (an adorable Beth Dixon) who’s had a heart attack. To occupy the summer days with some light academic responsibility, but also with a more hidden reason, Catherine reconnects with Don (Lee Tergesen), her ex from grad school days and a dean at a local college, and his homemaker wife Gwen (Kellie Overbey) who also figures dramatically in Catherine’s past.

The stakes start to clarify in a very funny early scene – there is much humor throughout – in which Don and Gwen’s babysitter Avery (a stinging and lively Virginia Kull) turns up for work with a black eye and Gwen refuses to let her tend to their three-year-old because it would suggest to the boy that violence is OK. Avery is making a reality show with her out-of-town boyfriend, and the dynamics of their relationship link in tricky ways with the hide-nothing ethos of the reality-TV era; with Catherine and Gwen’s alternate-track struggles; and with Alice’s recollection that in times past it was normal for women to feign the appearance of weakness to massage men’s egos, and what was so wrong with that?

Amy Brenneman, Kellie Overbey, and Virginia Kull in Rapture, Blister, Burn at Playwrights Horizons. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Amy Brenneman, Kellie Overbey, and Virginia Kull in Rapture, Blister, Burn at Playwrights Horizons. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

In a two-hour display of consummate storytelling craftsmanship, director Peter DeBois threads Gionfriddo’s fast-moving script into a neatly tied tapestry exploring through three generations the places women find themselves after several waves of feminism, backlash, and, yes, the resulting horror-movie genres.

The playwright avoids preaching or unnecessary exposition, concocting a clever if unlikely way to get her four women together in an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry. Calling on the deities and demons of feminism, from Freud and Nancy Friday to Phyllis Schlafly, Catherine and her less learned companions bump and jostle their way through an amazingly neat yet somehow natural-feeling plot involving role reversal, man-appeasing, and the devastating of dreams.

The story rollicks along, thought-provoking and delightfully fun. After Don leaves the drably unhappy Gwen for Catherine, the degenerated old-new couple’s debauched new life squeals quickly to a halt when Catherine hints at a book project the intellectually flaccid Don might undertake – and he leaves, crushed.

It’s up to Avery to articulate the wisdom she learned when she quit ice skating as a girl and her elders turned the event into an object lesson about an Olympic dream quashed: It’s bunk. Everyone has a dream or ambition that will never come to pass, though the people who love us play along with our dream even though they know it isn’t to be. Catherine was driven enough to achieve notoriety and worldly success but is worried to death no one will be around to love her after her mother dies. Gwen and Don use the old flame’s arrival to indulge long-deferred ambitions of their own, with predictably sad results.

But it feels unfair to even use words like “predictably” and “sad” in talking about this play, when they’re the opposite of the fast-moving and fun flavor of the work. Well acted and crisply directed on Alexander Dodge’s cleverly sliding sets, Rapture, Blister, Burn has the usual top-notch production values of Playwrights Horizons, where it is running through June 24.

For ticket discounts available to our readers, use the code RBBLOG when you order by June 5 online at Ticket Central or by calling 212-279-4200.

About Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Publisher and Executive Editor of Blogcritics as well as lead editor of the Culture & Society section. As a writer he contributes most often to Music, where he covers classical music (old and new) and other genres, and Culture, where he reviews NYC theater. Through Oren Hope Marketing and Copywriting at http://www.orenhope.com/ you can hire him to write or edit whatever marketing or journalistic materials your heart desires. Jon also writes the blog Park Odyssey at http://parkodyssey.blogspot.com/ where he is on a mission to visit every park in New York City. He has also been a part-time working musician, including as lead singer, songwriter, and bass player for Whisperado.

Check Also

David Greenspan in 'On Set with Theda Bara' at the Brick Theater. Photo by Emilio Madrid

Theater Review (NYC): ‘On Set with Theda Bara,’ a Solo Show by Joey Merlo Starring David Greenspan

A modern-day genderqueer teen tracks down the ghost of silent film star Theda Bara in this whirlwind gothic-noir-camp solo show.