Treacherous
roads make for riveting Drive
Vancouver Courier 29 May 2005
Reviewed by Jo Ledingham
When
I hear "pedophile" my grey matter starts going into
black and white overdrive. Pedophile=bad. Child=good. In How I
Learned to Drive, playwright Paula Vogel suggest that kind of
thinking might be simplistic. This family drama - a same-cast
remount of a 2004 Fringe show - is not an apology for pedophiles,
but it opens up interesting grey areas.
Actor
Eileen Barrett is Li'l Bit in this memory play set in Maryland.
In Li'l Bit's working class family, nicknames are given according
to genitalia: Big Papa isn't tall and Uncle Peck isn't famous
for his pectorals, if you get my drift. As with all memoires,
time is slippery. Barrett, a petite, frothy haired brunette with
wide eyes and a crinkly smile, is sometimes 12-year-old Li'l Bit,
then she's 18 or 40 or 12 again. It's frustrating keeping track
of the sequencing, but it doesn't really matter in the end. Li'l
Bit's story is clear.
Her
nickname was given on the day she was born; the family gathered
around, whipped off her diaper and checked her out. In the nursery
was Uncle Peck, not a blood relative but married to Li'l Bit's
aunt. He holds her in one hand, marvels - and falls in love. He's
an unhappily married man. He's a patient man. Like Barrett, actor
Allan Morgan (as Uncle Peck) handles the audience like a car;
now we're idling, then reversing, now in first gear and reversing
again. We know what Uncle Peck is doing is unwholesome, unfair
and criminal - but finely tuned Morgan draws some sympathy from
us, too. However, like the centre line down a highway, there are
lines that must be drawn.
Li'l
Bit has difficulty drawing those lines, too. She hates her disgusting
grandfather (portrayed by Jacques Lalonde), her ultra middle-class
mother (Tammy Bentz) and her death-on-sex grandmaother (Kelly
Metzger). Uncle Peck alone appreciates her intelligence and ambition;
he alone nurtures her. It's no wonder that she turns to him. And
it's no wonder that she flexes her own sexual muscles in what
she considers to be safe territory: in the company of her uncle.
It's Li'l Bit who brings up the subject of "going upstairs"
and she does let Uncle Peck kiss her breasts. Ultimately, though,
he's an adult, she the child. She may have her hands on the metaphorical
steering wheel, but he's working the pedals.
The
steering wheel is not all metaphor. Vogel structures How I Learned
to Drive around how Li'l Bit did learn to drive. The scenes are
announced by Lalonde, a male chorus of one, indicating today's
lesson: "You and the Reverse Gear," " Shifting
Into First Gear," "Idling In the Neutral Gear,"
etc. It's a very clever and theatrical framework on which to hang
a story. Bentz doubles as a female Greek chorus and offers straight-faced,
monotone pointers on etiquette for the modern girl: how to drink,
what to drink, how to throw up gracefully, how to hang on to your
all important virginitiy. "Wear a girdle so tight your beau
gets rubber burns on his fingers if he tries to steal your virtue."
Metzger, who can look 13, 30 and 93 all at the same time, doubles
as the teenage Greek chorus.
Vogel
and director James Fagan Tait hang on to a very fine balance.
Just as Uncle Peck teaches his unseen young nephew how to fish
- delicately, patiently - How I Learned to Drive is delicate and
patient.
Ultimately, however, it is Li'l Bit at 40 who cinches the argument
for us. Any sympathy for Uncle Peck seeps away as we see the havoc
wreaked in those critical years of Li'l Bit's adolescence. It's
possible to see Uncle Peck more as a rejected lover than a predator.
But just barely.
Simply,
exquisitely staged and produced by Overdrive Productions.
