News-Letter

The Marriage of Bette and Boo is the classic Christopher
Durang play: an absurdist comedy with dark undertones that satirizes
the Catholic Church and people's ridiculous compulsions. Also
characteristic of a Durang play is the complexity the production
requires. With over two dozen scenes, fast-paced dialogue, and several
musical numbers, this Durang work is a particularly risky, involved
choice for any theater company. That said, John Hopkins University
Theater's version of Durang's 1985 masterpiece more than lives up to
this challenge, producing a play that is absurd though comprehensible,
hilarious without abandoning its darkness and cerebral while never
ceasing to entertain.

The play is narrated by the character Matt (senior Michael
Vincent), who is meant to be a semi-autobiographical depiction of
Durang himself. The story begins with the marriage of Matt's parents,
Bette (senior Elizabeth Gilbert) and Boo (senior Anthony Blaha) with
their families there to celebrate. It is not long before their marriage
begins to fall apart. The successful birth of their first son, Matt, is
followed by a progression of stillborns who the Doctor (senior Akshay
Oberoi) unceremoniously and coldly throws to the ground after birth,
remarking "dead" only the first time while silently tossing the
successive ones. Boo takes to drinking while Bette remains obsessed
with having children. Whether Boo's alcoholism is a result of Bette's
desperation or vice-versa is left unanswered and rendered irrelevant as
the audience comes to understand that these characters do not live in a
world that is comprehensible by reason.

This is to say nothing of these two characters' respective families.

Bette's mother (junior Michelle Brown) is a domineering
controller who attempts to regulate what conservation topics are
permissible. One of her sisters, Joan (junior Justine Wiesinger) is
perpetually sullen and the other, Emily (junior Julie Sihilling) is a
mental clinic frequenter and predisposed to apologizing, asking at one
point, `'Is the phrase `my own stupidity' hyphenated?'' Bette's father,
Paul (junior Timothy Wang), due to a severe speech impediment, is
completely incomprehensible to everyone including his own family.

Boo's parents are equally laden by absurdity. His father, Karl
(junior Shaun Gould) is a misogynistic bully who constantly derides his
wife as the "dumbest white woman alive." Boo's mother, whom we only
know by her nickname, Soot (junior Elizabeth Eldridge), yields to her
husband's torment by ignoring reality and bursting out into hysterical
laughter whenever he is abusive.

In typical Durang fashion, he extends this level of absurdity
to the Catholic Church. The resident priest, Father Donnelly (Oberoi),
whom the characters often turn to for advice is perhaps the most
ridiculous of the characters presented. Performed with a hilarious --
though unnecessary -- Indian accent, he remarks that he is unable to
help people solve their problems, except to `'mumble platitudes'' to
the `'stupid people'' who approach him with their `'insoluble
problems.'' Oberoi steals the show as Father Donnelly when he gives a
brilliant interpretation of bacon being fried (you are going to have to
see it to understand).

The narrator, Matt is perhaps the most interesting, though
unexplored character. Matt belongs both within and apart from the
narrative, the teller of the story and an occasional participant,
though he often comes across as a distant spectator. The psychological
effects of his family's dysfunctions on him are not explicitly
conveyed, though as the story progresses we sense Matt's development
and his own voice becomes more pronounced, remarking toward the end of
the play, "I don't believe that God punishes people for specific
things. He punishes people in general for no reason."

This particular production of The Marriage of Bette and Boo effectively
captures the spirit and ideas of Durang. The play is a dark satire that
straddles the line of between fiction and fantasy while never belonging
to the magical realism genre. The actors and director Krista Smith
convey this vision that leaves the audience disturbed though unable to
control their laughter.

Article Tools