REVIEW: Mary-Louise Parker stars in ‘How I Learned to Drive’ on Broadway
Photo: How I Learned to Drive stars, from left, Mary-Louise Parker, Johanna Day and Alyssa May Gold. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
NEW YORK — How I Learned to Drive, the exquisite play revival now running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, is necessarily uncomfortable, featuring stunning performances from Mary-Louise Parker, David Morse and an expert company. The discomfort comes from Paula Vogel’s writing subject, which is how an uncle (Morse) groomed his niece (Parker) and abused her during her teenage years.
Parker plays Li’l Bit, a teenager growing up in a family that on its surface seems ordinary, although a bit odd. There are conversations with her grandparents and mother (brought to life by a Greek Chorus played by Johanna Day, Alyssa May Gold and Chris Myers), and the voice of reason within the family dynamics is seemingly Peck (Morse), a purportedly loving uncle who is something of a father figure to Li’l Bit.
He is not. He is an abusive older man who takes advantage of his niece. Ostensibly he endeavors to teach her how to drive a car, but in reality, he attempts to break her down with an inappropriate, harmful relationship. As Li’l Bit ages, she starts to realize the monster sitting by her side, and by her 18th birthday, she is ready to make a stand against this uncle of hers.
Along the way, Vogel imbues the one-act play with humor and pathos, which makes the subject matter all the more unsettling. Li’l Bit is a typical teenager in many ways, struggling with school and friends, and trying to move through the various chapters in her life, including learning how to drive and enrolling in college. Peck stands in her way, sometimes literally, holding her back and attempting to rob her of a loving, supportive family life. He’s a pathetic man with hurtful, harmful delusions of making this relationship somehow work. Watching the two talk back and forth, with Li’l Bit realizing the extent of this abusive relationship, makes for visceral theater that demands a lot of the audience’s attention.
There are many lessons to be learned during the play, but Vogel did not write a “lesson play” when she penned How I Learned to Drive several years ago. She seems more transfixed by the power differential between the adult and the teenager in the car, and how Li’l Bit finds a means of escape while the relationship spirals into a culminating encounter. With each passing scene there is a deeper realization that comes to Parker’s character. What might at first seem innocent enough eventually turns toxic, and she starts to comprehend her uncle’s true intentions. Once she attends college, she is given perspective and perhaps a means of comparison, and then she comes to terms with what Peck has done to her.
The performances are marvelous, starting with Parker, who masterfully plays a teenage girl with believability. The performance is not meant to be a literal characterization of someone much younger; Parker is skilled at the art of portrayal and projection, by which she offers physical and verbal cues to the audience that she is respecting the lived experience of the character she is bringing to life. Somehow she is both Parker and Li’L Bit on the Samuel J. Friedman stage, much like the best memory plays and Greek tragedies. She becomes her character, but the role of interpreter is never too far away. She both lives through the traumatic sequences, but also views them as an older adult.
Morse is creepy and scary as Peck, mostly because he plays the character as a mild-mannered, polite, deceptively nice guy. This is not a flashy performance in which his warped desires are on display for the full 100 minutes. Instead, he’s horribly crafty and delusional, not offering clues about his motives to the other adults in the room (although there is one scene in which Li’l Bit’s mother suspects something awry).
Mark Brokaw directs How I Learned to Drive with a minimal set (courtesy of Rachel Hauck), almost as if everything on stage is play-acting, from the Greek Chorus to the scattering of chairs. Vogel’s play is a theatrical exercise that offers a lens on how abuse can develop over several years, and the tools she employs to tell this story are the basic tools of the theatrical trade: character, chair, chorus, catharsis. It might come as no surprise that Parker, Morse and others debuted this play back in the 1990s.
How I Learned to Drive is a necessary play to experience, one that centers the narrative on a teenage girl facing an abuser in her life. The reality of the piece and the unsettling subject matter will stay with the audience long after the final blackout.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
How I Learned to Drive, by Paula Vogel and directed by Mark Brokaw, is now playing Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Starring Mary-Louise Parker, David Morse, Johanna Day, Alyssa May Gold and Chris Myers. Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission. Click here for more information and tickets.
