Reading: "Hurricane Diane" at Shotgun Players

Readers of this blog will recall that I am quite a fan of the playwright Madeleine George. Last year I was a production sponsor for Shotgun's production of her wonderful play, The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence, which the year before had been part of Shotgun's Champagne Staged Reading Series. And my introduction to George's writing was Shotgun's earlier production of her play Precious Little. One thing all of these Shotgun/George collaborations had in common was director (and sometimes, actor, Nancy Carlin).

So it comes as no surprise that Shotgun got the first chance to do a public reading of George's latest play, Hurricane Diane, and that they would once again tap Carlin to direct it. As one would expect from this writer, it is not a simple play, but it is both funny and moving, and has a lot to say on a lot of topics.

And as with all of Shotgun's staged readings, this is a remarkable achievement, as they take a group of actors and a director, give them only a few days to rehearse, and then put on two nights of rather elaborately staged readings, script-in-hand.

The Play

Madeleine George does not think small. This new play is loosely based on Euripides' classic tragedy The Bacchae. So those are pretty big shoes to fill. In this play, Dionysus (or as she calls herself these days, "Diane") comes to earth after a bit of a hiatus, only to find that modern humans have lost their connection with the planet they live on, and are therefor close to destroying it. So she sets out to recruit her four bacchae who will help her recover her following and the planet. And of course she sets out to do this in suburban New Jersey.

Appearing in the guise of a landscape designer, Diane sets out to reconnect four women who live in a suburban cul-de-sac with the blessings of the natural world. Pam, Carol, Renee, and Beth are all neighbors more concerned with how they measure up against HGTV Magazine and maximizing resale value of their homes than with any connection to the natural world.

So Diane comes to each and tries in various ways to reconnect them with the glory of nature, rather than the draw of the manufactured world. She has varying levels of success with each. The process inevitably involves the women connecting with themselves, as they struggle with their social conditioning against the forces of Diane and nature.

The Performance

As usual, it's hard to assess acting in a staged reading. This reading featured three actors I know quite well: Sarah Mitchell (Carol), Cathleen Riddley (Renee) and Megan Trout (Beth). The other two actors were less familiar to me: Maria Affinito (Pam) and Amy Lizardo in the central role of Diane. I did overhear one audience member say she had been smitten with Affinito (or her character; it was a little hard to tell from context). In general everyone was fine, and I thought the use of a single table to represent the generic suburban home of each of the women was clever.

All told I thought it was a little hard to judge this play (unlike, for example, Watson, where I walked out of the reading knowing I needed to see it fully staged). There is a lot going on, and some very clever dialogue. I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with The Bacchae to really grasp all the nuances of this riff on it, so I need to do that homework one of these days.

Bottom Line

It's good. I'd like to read it again and do some more detailed thinking about it, but I know there is something more to this that I'm not yet appreciating, and I need to figure out whether that's just me or the play needs fuller staging or what.

Meanwhile, as usual, I saw this on closing night, so regardless of what I say, you can't see it now. I will keep my eyes on this play, though, and I suspect we may see it produced somewhere about.