Playwright: Claudia Allen
At: Victory Gardens Theatre,
2259 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-3000; $33-$40
Runs through: Dec. 19
From the time they were teenagers, the proper Lillian and headstrong Ruth were always at odds with one another, 'Don't tell me what to do!' comprising their conversational refrain. The conflicts never quite escalate to complete estrangement—even the three-way contretemps over the boy-next-door Donny remains unresolved as the three neighbors 'hang fire', hesitating before making up their minds. But now, over 40 years later, Ruth is recovering from a stroke, Lillian lives in the Golden Years Retirement Home, the charming Donny has returned for their school reunion, and what makes you think anything has changed?
The popularity of Claudia Allen's plays rests in their author's talent for dropping potentially controversial motifs—like the septuagenarian sisters taking a skinny-dip in the creek—into the comfortable universe of a domestic situation comedy. Take Deb, for example, Ruth's fortysomething live-in companion: when she vows she will never marry, Lillian's buttoned-up son, Calvin, gasps, 'Are you GAY?' She isn't—and proceeds to prove it later in the play—but her AIDS-afflicted brother MAY have played a role in the fate of her abusive former husband.
As with the 2001 Fossils, the dramatic action centers on the two dowagers, played vigorously by Ann Whitney and Rachel Stephens, with Les Hinderyckx contributing oodles of charm as the weathered object of their affections. But Bethanny Alexander and Mattie Hawkinson lend just the right amount of unsentimentalized innocence to the sisters' younger selves, as do Meg Thalken and Mick Weber, as the sturdy Deb and wimpish Calvin. Sandy Shinner's direction keeps the play's pace brisk, timing crisp, stage business inventive and actorly mannerisms free of cloying cutesiness.
Allen's plays might be—and often are—dismissed as lightweight feel-good fare, but theatre's long history has room in it for cozy homilies as well as grand manifestos. And as the Baby Boom generation totters into the sunset, the commercial value of plays featuring geezers who Just Wanna Have Fun is not to be underestimated. Propriety has its place, says Allen, but when the length of your past exceeds that of your future, doing as you please is more important than doing as you're told. Who can argue with that?