'Boy Gets Girl': A risk pulled off well
In Rebecca Gilman's Boy Gets Girl, Theresa Bedell (Theresa Dolan) is the kind of woman whom just about everyone has stopped trying to fix up with male friends. She's an accomplished writer, smart, pretty, funny, sure, but her attitude, well, it just puts people off. And she knows it.
In Rebecca Gilman's
Boy Gets Girl
, Theresa Bedell (Theresa Dolan) is the kind of woman whom just about everyone has stopped trying to fix up with male friends. She's an accomplished writer, smart, pretty, funny, sure, but her attitude, well, it just puts people off. And she knows it.
This is why she agrees to meet Tony (John Allen Biles) for dinner, even though she doesn't really like him, and why, even though he sets off all her internal alarms, she blames herself for not making things work out.
At first, Gilman's dialogue comes quick in a one-two punch, a style that could pass as Mamet for women. As we chuckle at Theresa and judge her inability to commit to the most basic human interaction, we become complicit in the nightmare that is soon to follow.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Tony is far from harmless, Theresa no corporate ice queen, and this no farce about sex in the city.
Souderton's Montgomery Theater has taken a risk by producing Gilman's troubling, demanding work. Boy Gets Girl is a thriller that can't be exploitative: It follows the unraveling of a woman's very identity, but must avoid melodrama; it features several recognizable types, but must rise above caricature; it covers a semester's worth of women's studies but can't come off as strident or didactic.
Luckily, director Tom Quinn is the right person for the job, even when Gilman slips up with some improbable dialogue between the only men in Theresa's life: her paternalistic boss and compassionate coworker.
Of course, the success of this production depends entirely on Theresa, and it helps that Dolan hits every inexorable step with a fearlessness that ages her before our eyes and challenges the rest of the cast to meet her standards. For the most part, they succeed, particularly Hank deLuca as film director Les Kennkat, a bosom-worshipping Russ Meyer clone that Theresa grudgingly interviews, and Elyssa Phillips as her ditzy receptionist Harriet.
Adam Riggar's lighting design features the flicker and buzz of overhead office fluorescents between scenes, and the emphasis on this unsparing fixture helps assert the play's themes. However, Riggar's dated office set, paired with the music chosen by Brian S. Weis, give the false and distracting impression that this is a mid-'80s period piece, and only when laptops and cell phones appear do we realize the action is happening in the present.
Still, these issues are quibbles with what is a solid production of an interesting piece.
Boy Gets Girl
Written by Rebecca Gilman, directed by Tom Quinn, scenery and lighting by Adam Riggar, costumes by Nancy McClain, sound by Brian S. Weis.
Cast: Theresa Dolan (Theresa Bedell), John Allen Biles (Tony), Paul Dake (Howard Siegel), Brian Campbell (Mercer Stevens), Elyssa Phillips (Harriet), Maria Wolf (Madeleine Beck), Hank deLuca (Les Kennkat).
Playing at: Montgomery Theater, 124 Main St., Souderton. Through May 12. Tickets: $12 to $24. Information: 215-723-9984 or
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