If you like your theatre wild and wacky, take yourself to the Electric Lodge where Rogue Machine is presenting the West Coast premiere of Miss Lilly Gets Boned, by Bekah Brunstetter. Brunstetter is that rare playwright who is interested in religious themes (one of her earlier plays, The Cake, dealt with a pastry-shop owner whose Christian scruples won’t allow her to make a wedding cake for a gay couple). In Miss Lilly Gets Boned, Brunstetter focuses on a mousy woman, Miss Lilly (Larisa Oleynik), who is so religious that she has refused to have sex before marriage. Miss Lilly also teaches Sunday School at her Baptist church, “the kind where the pastor wears a wireless mic and the Christmas show employs over 50 actors. And live camels.” (the playwright’s words). Miss Lilly, when pressed by her blonde, slutty sister Lara (Tasha Ames), finally admits that, all right, she would go to bed with a man, providing he seemed to be sent by God—and was “tall, had an accent, and wore blazers.” When just such a hunk turns up in her life, Richard (Iman Nazemzadeh), the naïve, inexperienced, but extremely sweet Miss Lilly decides to give herself to him. It’s a mistake, of course; the widower Richard isn’t ready to commit himself, and dumps her. Deeply hurt and shocked—she has always believed in good—Miss Lilly suddenly experiences the vengeance of the Old Testament. There is a bizarre side story to this love story. It involves an elephant, puppeteered by Justice Quinn, Rachael Caselli, and Amir Levy, This hulking beast, who is under the care of a veterinarian, Dr Vandallha Bhalla (Kavi Ladnier), is living nearby (“in a place where you put elephants when they’ve been bad”). Back in Nigeria, this young elephant went berserk when hunters killed his mother—and attacked a group of white people on safari. Among those white people were Richard and his son Jordan (Brady Amaya), who watched in horror when the elephant trampled Richard’s wife to death. This flips the play’s theme from love to love and death. It’s a profound change and gives the play a whole other unexpected dimension. Does it work? Brunstetter does her best to bring this new complication off, mostly by having us watch Miss Lilly change from good to bad (she attacks Michael and clubs him to death with a piece of elephant tusk. Like I told you, this is a wild and wacky play, a horror story, really (with lashings of comedy and satire). I’m not sorry I saw it, but I doubt whether I’d ever want to see it again. The actors deserve full marks for the way they brought Brunstetter’s play to life. Ditto the large production team led by scenic designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz, puppet designer Sean Cawelti, and shadow puppet designer Mark Royston.
