By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Dear readers, if you have a problem with a certain slang word for an intimate part of the female anatomy, you should stop reading now. There’s some fascinating school board and city council stories elsewhere on this site, and even a review of the family friendly musical “The Drowsy Chaperone.”
But if you have sensitivity to certain language, this story is not for you. You’ve been warned, so don’t go griping about this on Facebook.
But when the word is even in the title, and is liberally and centrally used there’s no point in writing around it. And if you are an adult, with an interest in the fluidity of gender and desire and angst over the state of the world, you probably don’t want to avoid this play, because it’s damned funny — and that’s not the word I’ve been alluding to.
Here’s the full title of Jen Silverman’s play: “Collective Rage: A Play In Five Betties: In Essence, A Queer And Occasionally Hazardous Exploration; Do You Remember When You Were in Middle School And You Read About Shackleton And How He Explored The Antarctic?; Imagine The Antarctic As A Pussy And It’s Sort Of Like That.”
Yes, sort of like that. The title captures the unrelenting free floating self-aware humor of the piece.
The BGSU Department of Theatre and Film’s production of “Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties,” directed by Sara Lipinski Chambers, opens tonight (Feb. 20) at 8 in the Eva Marie Saint Theatre in the Wolfe Center for the Arts. The play continues weekends through Saturday, Feb. 29.
We meet in turn the five Betties, starting with Betty 1 (Anna Parchem) who has just watched the news and is incensed by the horrors she’s seen. Her off-stage husband basically tells her to chill. This Betty is white, very rich, and powerful, as she’s wont to inform anyone she encounters.
That includes Betty 2 (Kayleigh Hahn), someone a tick or two lower on the social scale, and very aware of her place.
She’s invited to a dinner party where Betty 1 invites Betty 3 (Isabella Grima), a Latina, in an attempt, I’m sure, to spice things up.
But Betty 3 proves a little too spicy when she starts telling in detail how amazing it felt the first time she had sex with another woman.
We don’t talk about those things, Betties 1 and 2 scolds her. Betty 3 declares that this gathering is a “boring ass party,” and promises to throw her own.
Betty 2 is invited and attends and meets not only Betty 4 (Hanna Felver), Betty 3’s on-and-off again girlfriend, but her vulva. The three women study their private parts using hand mirrors. Betty 2, a shy, repressed woman, is at first horrified, then fascinated. For the rest of the play her relationship with her “pussy” is a running theme.
Finally we meet Betty 5 (Jacque Dial) a self-described “gender-nonconforming masculine-presenting female-bodied individual” who is fine with the use of female pronouns while she and Betty 4 are working on their trucks and talking about the mechanics of relationships.
Betty 5 runs a boxing gym. Betty 1 arrives at the gym, wanting an outlet for all her pent-up anger at the world, and her husband. She finds it, and more.
Meanwhile Betty 3 goes to the “thea-tah” as she insists on pronouncing it, on a date with a rich woman to see Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Based on that she decides the way to fame and fortune is to act. So she wants to produce her own version of the Rude Mechanicals play within a play despite her negligible knowledge of theater, however it’s pronounced.
Betty 1 offers to help based on her tangential experience with theater while at Amherst College. But Betty 3 has no interest in any collaboration even with Betty 4, who was supposed to be her partner in the venture. Betty 4 had hoped working on the play would revive their relationship.
The play stumbles comically toward production, as the relationships shift.
Betty 3 brings Betty 2 on as her intern, treating her as her errand girl.
Betty 2 is the play’s “pussy” in the vulgar, insulting meaning of the word. Everyone either pushes her around or ignores her. Tellingly in the play within the play she is cast as the lion, a cat, a kind of pussy. In the end, the four other Betties have paired off, leaving her alone on the stage as their show was supposed to open. She’s vulnerable, in her underwear, singing a song of her own devising, about how lost she feels. It’s a confession about what bewilders, angers and frightens her. As awkward and prosaic as the lyrics are, they resonate with burgeoning self-awareness.
The other Betties may have found the love of others, but Betty 2 seems to be on the verge of loving herself.
It’s a stunning conclusion to a play that shows off the striking comic gifts, physical and verbal, of the cast.
Those who give in to the charms of the show’s ribald quirkiness will fall in love with all these Betties.
***
Performances of “Collective Rage: A Play In Five Betties” are Feb. 20-22 and 27-29 at 8 p.m., and Feb. 22, 23 and 29 at 2 p.m. Advance tickets are $15, $5 for students, $10 for seniors. On the day of the performance, tickets are $10 for students and $20 for all others. Tickets are available online at bgsu.edu/arts or by calling the box office at 419-372-8171.
