July 21, 1998

In Atom Egoyan's 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, for those of you who remember, the character of Nicole Burnell was joyously in love with her father. Yes, it was incest, but she was still too young to realize the "sin" in it. Thus, she saw this affair - if you can call it that - as something unconditional, something pure.

In Paula Vogel's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "How I Learned to Drive," the character of Li'l Bit is in love with her uncle, Peck. But what makes her different from Nicole Burnell is that she realizes the sin, albeit too late, in her incestuous affair. To me, Li'l Bit resembles Nicole Burnell, only years later, as a mature woman full of resentment and secret lust for her uncle, a woman reflecting on who she is currently and how she became that way. And I think that it was this parallel, and my love for Egoyan's movie, that made me enjoy the play. But thinking back, the play itself, though an excellent piece of drama, seems a bit too politically correct for my tastes. Essentially, this is a play about blaming your family for your problems, which these days seems like a pretty tired subject. But in the end, the near-flawless production and some terrific acting made the experience memorable for me.

"How I Learned To Drive" tells the story of Li'l Bit's upbringing in reverse, from her departure to college back to the age of nine. As we watch, we see her relationship with Peck end before it begins, and we see the effects of the relationship before the cause. Because of this, we get a strong impression as to how and why these two got together in the first place, and the impression that they needed to be together.

The family to which they belong - their mannerisms and such - does much to explain the reasons for Li'l Bit's and Peck's relationship. It is a family bound by obsolete philosophies, by drinking, by sexual mistakes and anger and resentments. This is a family that defines itself, both directly and indirectly, with sex. They discuss at the dinner table the roles of women in the household and in bed. They speak unabashedly about past promiscuity and bad sexual experiences. Even the nicknames of the family members root themselves in sexual reference: Li'l Bit is called so because she was born with just a "li'l bit" of pubic hair on her. Her mother's nickname involves her small chest. Peck's name? well, you can imagine where that comes from.

Li'l Bit is a typical small town girl with big dreams, and her only vision of worldliness comes in the shape of Peck. Peck, though, is an epitome of sexual repression, a man who's been told for too long what to do and how to do it. In a family run by womanly control, he sees a dominant relationship with Li'l Bit as a breath of fresh air. For these reasons alone, it's obvious why Peck and Li'l Bit end up together, almost heartbreakingly so. And I get the sense, that if they weren't related, they probably would have been happy together, as sick as that sounds. But because they're related, Li'l Bit's guilt soon overwhelms her, and to cope with things, she runs away to college.

The play cleverly uses a modern Greek chorus to frame its narrative. Between and during scenes, the chorus appears from all corners of the playhouse, uttering snippets from driving lesson lectures, snippets which hint to the emotional subtexts of the characters. Other times, the chorus supplies introductions to the scenes or lines of memory, all of which creates a wonderful ominous tone.

The production by Ant Farm Productions is near-flawless. If I have to fault anything, it would be in the way the play ends. The final two scenes, which include a dramatization of Li'l Bit's first molestation (behind the wheel of a car, of course, hence the title) by Peck, and a final scene in which Li'l Bit's past comes into perspective, seem more gratuitous than powerful. In the former, the emotions and the reasoning behind those emotions have already been well established earlier in the play, thus reducing the frightening nature of the scene to pure shock value and nothing else. The final seen uses Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" as its closing ode, but by using music (and I think any music would have done the same thing) the final impact of the play cheapens into melodrama, making it end on a more mawkish note than a powerful one. By stripping the play of the molestation scene and the music used in the last scene, the ultimate effect play would have been stronger.

The direction by David Karl Lee is masterful. He has his actors use every bit of the stage, and all to good purpose: Everything seems to count here, the way members of the chorus enter and exit, the positioning of the actors even when they are not active in the scene, the way the props are moved from scene to scene. It's all done seamlessly, giving wonderful fluidity to the work.

The acting is stupendous, some of the best I've seen on the local stage. Becky Fisher, last seen in the Fringe Festival's wonderful "Odd Ducks" performance, is fantastic here, playing her character to its full range, from an inquisitive child to a lovelorn adolescent to a peaceful-minded adult. David Lee Bass, as Peck, has a naturalness to him that reminded me much of Newman and Redford int heir Butch Cassidy and Sting years: He's extremely likable, and it's easy to see, because of his respectful and easy spoken tones, how Li'l Bit could fall for him. Yet behind his eyes lurks a creepy menace. He is the villain of the play, but he is not evil at heart, and Bass does a fantastic job at conveying that complexity. And the members of the chorus (Catherine Stork, John Le Mieux, and Allison Van Ness) create memorable turns as a variety of people from Li'l Bit's past, including her mother, grandparents, school mates, lovers. This is top-notch work.

Eyal Goldshmid I am a fiction writer supporting myself as a government clerk for the US army. Until I can fully live off writing, I plan to milk all the luxury I can from the American taxpayer. Other Articles I've Written