A much-praised 2004 Fringe festival production of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive has been handed that rarest of Vancouver phenomenon, a remount.
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Vogel won a Pulitzer Prize for this 1998 play, and should have been handed a medal for bravery as well. How I Learned to Drive is an unflinching portrait of the darkest of family secrets, with a young girl's uncle teaching her to drive but intent on getting much more from his niece. "Theatre could make us enjoy being uncomfortable," Vogel once said, "That's why it's dangerous."

Vogel is angry at the way theatre, especially in the U.S., is all too often just a plaything for the elite. How I Learned to Drive doesn't offer any way out for its audience, forced to watch not only the sly and sinister manipulations of Uncle Peck as he steers L'il Bit toward sexual abuse, but the rotten relationship this poor girl has with other equelly creepy members of her family.

That weird name, for instance, is sexual as well, a constant and embarassing reminder to L'il Bit that her mother and grandparents are among that subclass of humans who take pleasure in sexualizing children at far too young an age.

Bleak? You bet! How I Learned to Drive is designed to make us squirm, and with direction from the masterful James Fagan Tait, Allan Morgan as Peck and Eileen Barrett as L'il Bit are out to make sure the squirm translates into theatre that's not to be forgotten -- even by the elite.
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by Peter Birnie, Sun Theatre Critic pbirnie@png.canwest.com