THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO
Apple Tree Theatre
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The babies belong to Bette and Boo (Kathy Santen and Sean Grennan), who have little success producing live children after their first, a boy named Matt, is born. Bette is obsessed with having a large brood, all of whom she will name after the characters from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series. As failed pregnancy follows failed pregnancy, Boo retreats into alcoholism and the marriage begins to disintegrate. God, church, and family fall far short of expectations. In spite of Bette’s prayers, God does not come through with a miracle for her. Her mother (Margaret Ingraham) refuses to address her children’s problems–she prefers them unhappy and living at home with her. Her father (Don Blair) seems compassionate, but no one can understand a word of the gibberish he speaks. However, Boo’s father (J. Patrick McCormack) speaks very well. A smooth sadist who uses his words brutally, he offers to “christen the next stillborn” and pours a glass of Scotch into Bette’s lap. His obsequious wife (Barbara Simpson) fends off his verbal abuse with a habitual nervous twitter. The parish priest (Marc Silvia) offers nothing in the way of solace or advice and wonders “why God made people stupid.”
The company and director Mark Lococo are to be congratulated for resisting the temptation to whitewash Durang for the benefit of their subscribers–Apple Tree is located in a shopping mall in Highland Park, where people may be a little more sensitive about satire aimed at families. Several people at the Saturday-night performance I attended headed straight for the door after the first act, including a few families and a flock of ladies in spring dresses who left the third row conspicuously empty when the lights went down.
“You’re trying to manipulate me,” the therapist warns him.
