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M/CLEAR Temp: 75 °F Wind: S at 3 mph Friday, August 16, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Cyberchef E The People Golf Job Network Headbone Zone Wellness Connection Movie Times Newspaper in Education Oregon CarZone Outdoor Journal Personals Prime Times Real Estate Tempo A & E TV Times W3 Magazine CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Destinations Automotive Communities Employment Entertainment Publications Real Estate Recreation Shopping Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Jobs @ Mail Tribune Email Story to a Friend July 28, 2002 Playwright drives plot of control and power "How I Learned to Drive" will make you squirm. Paula Vogel’s journey into a woman’s flashbacks to her teens with a pedophile uncle won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998 and has spread like a forest fire in a dry afternoon wind. It’s come to the Rogue Valley in an Actors’ Theatre production that opened Friday, directed by Caroline Shaffer. Hard as it may be, given the subject matter, to imagine this often-comic drama working, work it does. The American rite of learning to drive a car provides both the play’s central metaphor and the pivot of the main action. Uncle Peck (Peter Alzado) gave Little Bit (Kate Sullivan) driving lessons and more (we’re not sure how much more) on the back roads of Maryland in the 1960s as the farms were giving way to development and Little Bit was developing into a young woman. Now a woman in her 30s, she shuffles her memories and fans them out on a table for us. Maybe they’ve been stirred by Patsy Cline and Chuck Berry. Maybe she’s recalling the smell of farmland in the 1960s, a leather dashboard, the Herbal Essence shampoo in a 17-year-old girl’s hair. Characters acting as a chorus announce scene titles that seem to be about driving but are double and even triple entendres pointing to abuse and, maybe, life lessons. The lessons unfold against a backdrop of country roads, drive-in theaters and revival tents, and we feel like voyeurs and the squirming starts. Before we learn what Peck did, we discover that Little Bit dropped out of college in 1970, began drinking, had a series of dead-end jobs. It’s a not-unfamiliar road for abuse survivors. "Nothing is going to happen until you want it to," her uncle by marriage tells her in 1968 when she’s 16. "I’m a very patient man." "Someone is going to get hurt," Little Bit says. She’s right, of course. We tune into this dance at intervals. Peck is obsessed with his niece — today he’d be told to seek counseling — yet treats her with great forbearance. He gives her gifts (unbelievably, he actually seems to care about her driving ). He’s a maddening, manipulative character whose very weakness makes him dangerous. Alzado plays him with a mix of good ol’ boy exuberance and infinite patience, never over the top. Little Bit comes from a coarse, redneck family of comic rustics. Sullivan plays her with a naivet� that stops short of bumpkin territory and a budding sensuality that stops short of Lolita territory, as befits Vogel’s script. He has a fire in his heart; she has a fire in her mind. The 30-something Bit gets a taste of what drove Peck when she seduces a callow young man she meets on a bus. It’s about control and power, the things that draw young men to cars. It would be easy to write a screed against child abuse, but that’s not what Vogel is up to. Layers of guilt and responsibility and human frailty overlap like the layers of an onion which we finally peel back to Bit’s 11th year and Peck’s original sin. Vogel has said she thinks abuse survivors need to get beyond victimhood. Some may accuse her of soft-pedaling the issue. They may have a point. Is not the tale deliberately inoffensive with its breezy tone and the strength of Little Bit, whom we like? But Vogel’s women are strong and good, her men obsessive and manipulative or downright oafish. And although Bit is a likable survivor, she hasn’t lived in her body since she was 11, and now she’s a rambler. "How I Learned to Drive" is comic without being a comedy and topical without being preachy. Nothing is simple here. One example: Is Sara Foster’s teen vamp in a cheesecake photo session scene the inner Little Bit, or Peck’s perception? Vogel occasionally dazzles us with riffs like an amazing rhapsody on the sensuality of the 1956 Chevrolet by Alzado, and Brandy Carson’s hilarious delivery of "A Mother’s Guide to Drinking." All the repellent and engrossing complexity comes into focus near the end when the onion has been peeled back to reveal Peck as a betrayer before his vaunted patience ever came forth. There’s deep hurt here, tentative healing if not total redemption, and a sense of moving on. I suspect the play will prompt many a spirited discussion. It’s testimony to what can be done without multi-million dollar theaters and lush production values by an ambitious company choosing good, if difficult, material. Kudos. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S