Nervous laughter, people squirming in their seats, and everyone thinking “this is too uncomfortable just get me the hell out of here.” This is the kind of elicited response to BareStage’s Boy Gets Girl.
Written by Rebecca Gilman in 2000, Boy Gets Girl begins with a blind date where an overworked and well-read Theresa meets a socially awkward Tony, who stumbles over his words, for a drink. The encounter is undoubtedly uncomfortable, but seems harmless, until Tony persistently and, eventually, viciously stalks the Theresa. As the events unfold we see her struggle to maintain her composure, especially with a support system that is unequipped to deal with the situation, in a show that “explores the male gaze, masculinity, sexism and the toxic side effects of idealized romantic pursuit.”
The play is gripping, tastefully uncomfortable, darkly humorous, and an overall engaging and entertaining experience. Marie Morley, who plays Teresa, and Ben Safvati, who plays her colleague Mercer, give particularly exceptional performances.
However, the play suffers from a force-fed and problematic agenda. In practically every scene all of the dialogue and action focuses on discussing sexism. Whether through dialogue or through action, it seems as if Rebecca Gilman had a checklist of everything men do to oppress women and then had each scene address a specific issue in a very ham-fisted way. For example, at the very beginning of the play she very awkwardly works in micro-aggressions where the soon-to-be stalker acts surprised when the Theresa reveals that she is a baseball fan. As each scene ends, I can check off another issue. Gilman is more concerned with clearly outlining everything that is wrong with the patriarchy than telling an organic story where the audience can draw its own conclusions.
“The script itself touches on the male gaze, violence against women (systemic and microagressions), and objectification BUT it never seems to go there. Whenever I feel like the characters are beginning to articulate something that fully addresses the complexities women and men face in a patriarchal society… it stops. Why is that?” Director Nicholas Murphy states about how the script merely and problematically scratches the surface of the complexities of both the male and female parties in these scenarios.
Madeleine Pla, who plays Detective Madeline Beck, believes that, “there are some scenarios that don’t show the full scope and accurately represent the issue. It’s a scenario where they believed her pretty quickly. In the real world they’d be like, ‘you’re being paranoid, don’t worry about it.’”
However, Murphy attempted to update the script and make it more relatable to today’s society. “The director Nick did a good job with closely analyzing the text and things we didn’t notice as men. At this point this play is kind of outdated. It may have been progressive at its time which was fifteen years ago,” Safvati states. For one thing, Murphy tries to add substance where no substance is found in the play. “I didn’t change any words. I stayed true to the script. But I did change it in different ways. Like one character, her name is Harriet, who’s a 22-year-old secretary. Most of the lines given to her don’t have substance, a lot of ‘I dunnos’ and ‘I guess’s’. I don’t think it was a fair representation of young people. I worked closely with the actor to give Harriet life and a fair representation,” Murphy says.
Although the production does have its issues, the play still touches on poignant and vital topics prevalent today. “It’s important that it shows [the stalking scenario], how it plays out in her life. You usually see stalking as just a headline. This shows it’s a real human being, not just a statistic,” Murphy states. “ In Act 1 Scene 7, there is a very powerful scene. Theresa is alone in an apartment and she receives phone call after phone call. Fear, panic, and doubt really plant a seed in her mind. And from there you realize how this applies today with social media. With the constant attention you give to people and the constant harassment on social media, like Tinder.”
While the play isn’t perfect, I would definitely recommend it. Even if you don’t agree with its message, it still forces us to think about important issues, like stalking. We are on a college campus where sexual assault and predation is rampant, and frequently access to social media can help foster such issues. Boy Gets Girl is definitely an important play for Berkeley students to check out.
Check out BareStage’s “Boy Gets Girl” on November 20th and 21st at 8:00pm or November 22nd at 5:00pm at the Choral Rehearsal Hall in the basement of the Cesar E. Chavez Center.
Images: Riley Bathauer Photography
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Theatrical Review Well-Intentioned, Despite It Is Problematic Aspects
A recent review for Caliber Magazine on a local theatrical production of Rebecca Gilman’s ‘Boy Gets Girl’ started out with only a few small red flags. The article, written by a person named “Daniel,” addressed the play’s difficult aspects: specifically, the fact that it deals with the male gaze and stalking. The cause, at this point, was by no means lost. The first real sign of trouble, however, arrived in the third paragraph: “tastefully uncomfortable.” It’s an odd little phrase, and seemingly innocuous enough. However on further reflection, the reader comes to realize that the implication that a play depicting insidious abuse and violence against women could be “tasteful” in these discomforts seems like an excuse-the trivial pardoning of a bad thing for its apparent beauty.
The author goes on to distill and simplify the piece of art into a singular message, clear and uninterpretable in its terms. While this is unfortunate, the real tragedy lies in the reviewer’s insistence that this message is “a force-fed and problematic agenda.” The reviewer goes on to describe how the message is “force-fed,” but does not explain why the agenda is problematic, leaving the reader no choice but to read “outlining everything that is wrong with the patriarchy” as the “problematic message.” Perhaps the reviewer should have been a little more “ham-fisted” in explaining what the problematic aspects were.
Ultimately, despite vacillating between accusations of being too direct about its message and “problematically scratch[ing] the surface,” the message of the play is assumed to be a relatively clear and obvious one: stalking is bad. This is something most people can most likely agree with. The patriarchy is an outdated and unjust system, stalking is highly inappropriate, and violence against women is often excused, perpetuated, or allowed to continue by our own cultures and systems of justice. Were an audience to condone such simplifications of a complicated play, most people would, we would like to think, at the very least agree with the basics: stalking is bad. And yet, this review is careful to excuse those who might disagree with such a positively inflammatory message: “Even if you don’t agree with its message. . . ” More than just displaying an impressive command of the apostrophe, this small sentence is perhaps the most unfortunate and problematic aspect of this otherwise well-intentioned and positive review.