THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO
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The story of Bette and Boo’s marriage is told by Matt, the only one of their five children to be born alive. Matt has kept a notebook, recording the details of his unhappy childhood, and he refers to this notebook as he introduces scenes in the play. He doesn’t draw a pretty picture. Boo is a benign and withdrawn alcoholic. Bette is a relentless, neurotic bitch who pursues her juvenile fantasy of a large family through miscarriage after miscarriage. One grandfather has a speech impediment, and the other is a misogynistic bore. Everyone except Matt, the narrator-victim, is a misshapen excuse for a human being.
This seems dishonest. First of all, the play isn’t about Bette and Boo, as the title suggests, but, elliptically, about Matt. Now if Durang (by way of Matt) chooses to ridicule his family, fine, but he could stand to be more up-front about it. Instead he presents Matt as an uncontested star witness, and then halfheartedly tosses in a couple scenes that purport to elicit sympathy for Bette and Boo, but are really sops to mitigate the metallic taste of the rapacious comedy.
There are acting problems as well, particularly in the major roles. Joy Thorbjornsen is consistently thoughtless in her portrayal of Boo–which would be brilliant if she could make that a character’s and not an actor’s trait–and reveals nothing of the implicitly weird relationship between Bette and Matt. Peter Peavoy (as Boo) improves dramatically in the second act but still remains remote and unreadable. And all I see in Edward Bevan (as Matt) is the handsome, bland anonymity of a print model. His clothes become him, and in this case he’s dressed as a casual preppie.
