Rapture, Blister, Burn

To paraphrase Helen Keller, an early 20th century, American feminist, what is life if not an adventure? Gina Gionfriddo indirectly explores this idea in her sharp, funny, bittersweet play, Rapture, Blister, Burn, currently at the Tony Award-winning Huntington Theater Company in Boston.

I originally saw this play at Playwrights Horizon in New York City and disliked that production so much, I could not remember anything about it. After seeing the Boston staging and revisiting my review, everything came into focus in spectacular fashion. Under the skilled hand of director Peter DuBois, a strong cast brings Gionfriddo’s story to a full realization.

Catherine Croll, beautifully played by Kate Shindle, is a 42-year-old writer and professor who has returned to her hometown to care for her mother who has had a heart attack and whom Kate feels is about to die. Her ex-boyfried, Don Harper, brought to life by the deft hand of Timothy John Smith, lives here with his two children and wife, Gwen, played with sensitivity and understanding by Annie McNamara. Don is a professor at a local college and has recently been made a Dean. Oh, by the way, Gwen and Kate were roommates in graduate school with Don as the romantic interest of both. Oh my, what can possibly happen with this gathering? Not surprisingly, a great deal and in surprising ways.

Kate has taken a year's sabbatical from her job to be with her mother. Gwen decides to help Kate by getting Don to give her a part-time teaching job at the local college. She is hired to teach a summer course on feminism, and her only two students are Gwen and her 20-year-old, ex-babysitter, Avery Willard.

The two stand-out performances and the keys to making this story work are Kate's mom Alice and the Harpers’ ex-babysitter, Avery. The veteran Nancy Carroll inhabits Alice Croll so thoroughly that we are drawn willingly into the embrace of her character with all of her wry commentary and wisdom on romance, marriage and family; many of which, concerning her father and mother's relationship, are surprises to Kate.

Shannon Esper absolutely becomes Avery Willard, the very modern college student, whose views of relationships and the roles of men and women are totally alien to the world of Kate, Gwen, and Don but surprisingly resonant with that of Alice. Where this seminar with Gwen and Avery, guided by Kate, in Alice's home, ends up, is the adventure of the summer in a college town in New England, and an evening a very good theater in Boston.

Alexander Dodge’s scenic design is very well done with sliding sets that effectively establish each of the settings with a minimum of effort. Essential to these settings is the lighting design of Jeff Croiter. Rounding out the technical side of this production are Mimi O'Donnell's costume design which adds to the definition of the characters without intruding into the dramatization, and M.L. Dogg's sound design which uses effective songs that get us seamlessly from scene to scene by being seamless to the story.