Varying takes on toxic masculinity and dysfunctional families are on view in two Broadway revivals of powerful, late 20th century works. Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive focuses on a woman’s recollection of her ambiguous, incestuous relationship with a pedophile uncle, while David Mamet’s American Buffalo takes a brutal but sympathetic look at a makeshift family. Both are given strong interpretations by their directors and cast, but Drive finds more layers beneath the surface, possibly because director (Mark Brokaw) and three of the leads (Mary-Louise Parker, David Morse, Johanna Day) are repeating their duties from the original 1997 Off-Broadway production at the Vineyard Theater which resulted in a Pulitzer Prize.
Vogel uses the metaphor of learning to operate an automobile to relate the twisted connection between Li’l Bit (Parker), an awkward, artistically inclined young woman yearning to break free of her rural Maryland family, and Peck (Morse), her uncle by marriage, whose interest in his niece blurs the line between emotional support and sexual abuse.
Three actors (Day, Alyssa May Gold, Chris Myers) play all the other roles in Vogel’s fascinating, kaleidoscopic script, narrated by an adult Li’l Bit. Brokaw’s direction remains fluid and compassionate, giving equal truth to all the participants in a shameful, secretive affair. Rachel Hauk’s suggestive set, evocative of farmlands and highways, becomes a landscape of painful memories, transformed into a variety of locals by Mark McCullough’s lighting.
Parker and Morse won critical praise and awards the first time around and their limning has only gotten richer in the intervening 25 years. Parker makes seamless transitions for her character at various ages, slipping from cynical, forgiving adult to eager child to volatile teen with grace and attention to detail. Her physical life is fascinating as she conveys Li’l Bit’s uncomfortable relationship with her changing body. The most vibrant element in the performance is her bond with Uncle Peck which Parker renders in all its clashing variety. She loves him because he pays attention to her and at the same time she loathes him for his carnal advances. But she is also drawn to him. Watching these conflicting emotions play on Parker’s pliant features and shifting body is a master class in acting.
Morse is equally versatile in his interpretation of Uncle Peck’s roiling sea of desires, passions, and manipulations. He effortlessly conveys the predator’s charm and genuine concern for his target. This Peck actually believes he’s doing nothing wrong. The glimmers of a guilty conscious show briefly in his twinkling smile which never becomes an obvious leer. Morse actually makes us understand Peck’s motives, even as we are horrified by them.
Another wonder in Brokaw’s revisiting of the play is the emphasis on the family which fosters the dangerous liaison between uncle and niece. Day creates a powerful impression of denial as Peck’s stoic wife in a spellbinding monologue and of guilt as Li’l Bit’s defensive mother. Gold and Myers admirably fill the roles of grandparents, schoolmates and friends to complete a memorable Drive into painful and illuminating territory.
