Stage Review: 'How I Learned to Drive' at Off The Wall

I finally made it down to Off the Wall Productions in Little Washington the weekend before last. (That it took me so long to write this review suggests what it means to be semi-retired -- i.e., as busy as ever.) And I discovered that Off The Wall is an ambitious little art theater with a big appetite for challenging plays, witness its current show (current only through Saturday), "How I learned to Drive."

Context is a big part of it, of course. "How I Learned to Drive" wouldn't be as big a surprise staged in Pittsburgh, where you expect edgier subject matter. In fact, in Pittsburgh it was first staged by the Public Theater, not the most cutting-edge company in town. That was in 1999, during the regime of previous artistic director Eddie Gilbert, hard on the heels of its New York debut in early 1998.

But playwright Paula Vogel's theme, the sexual abuse of a girl by her uncle, 27 years her senior, and its effect on her life, is legitimately disturbing. And it's made even more disturbing, perversely enough, by being presented as such a comical, confiding, all-American family memory play, and using the whole gamut of possible metaphoric connections between two of the rites of maturity, learning to drive and sex.

(In the picture, Erika Cuenca as L'il Bit is at the right. The others are Allison Cahill, F.J. Hartland and Lissa Brennan, who play different roles but principally L'il Bit's aunt, grandpa and grandma. Click here for a picture of L'il Bit and Uncle Peck.)

Of course we like L'il Bit, now nearly 35 as she narrates her own story. But astonishingly, we rather like her Uncle Peck, too, even though we know right off that he has some far-from avuncular designs on her. But he seems more a chivalrous romantic than a pedophile, and he brings something appealing into L'il Bit's life, so it's easy enough for us to close our eyes to the seamy side and the potential effects of what he's up to.

His wife does that. As apparently often happens, she rather blames L'il Bit for attracting her husband. She doesn't want to call him on whatever he's doing -- she'd rather blame the victim and hope that her husband will come back to her eventually. In other words, she's a co-conspirator, if only by inaction.

L'il Bit herself is also guilty of downplaying Peck's abuse of her, if only in avoiding until the last minute her full revelation of what it was. But lest we wax censorious, we should notice that we're implicated, too, because, as I say, we've also wanted to make excuses for Uncle Peck.

Gradually we discover the costs that L'il Bit has hidden. At the end of the play, in re-living for us her first sexual encounter with Peck, when she was just 11, L'il Bit finally tells us that was "the last time I ever lived in my body." And that's even though, when she turns 18 (as she tells us from the vantage point of 17 years later), she breaks clear of him. But she does it only by dropping out of college and cutting herself off from her family, too. Now, almost twice as old as she was when she last saw him, she still suffers emotionally.

As this brief plot summary suggests, the play jumps all over time-wise, driving forward and then looping back, and then back again, the better to introduce us to the story from many angles, before finally making its full import clear. Along the way, there's plenty of humor, but it's often of the slightly queasy, rueful kind, such as the social consequences of L'il Bit's discomfort with her large breasts. We watch her memories of suffering in gym class, showing a self-consciousness that oddly mirrors Peck's.

There are clearly similarities between them, and not just because they share embarrassment over their hapless, trashy relatives. Just as he's addicted to liquor and young girls, even though he knows both are bad for him, so too she is addicted to him, as the most worldly guy around, even though she knows that even the circumscribed sexual relationship they develop is bad for her.

Erika Cuenca is a feeling, delicate actress who balances L'il Bit carefully on the thin line between insightful and obtuse, giving a very fine performance. Her bouts of apparent happiness are constantly shadowed by ominous clouds -- you yearn for her, even though you know it's not going to turn out well. All I find lacking is an early touch of the hurt that we know is festering, even though she hasn't told us about it.

As Peck, Ron Siebert matches Cuenca in delicacy. He doesn't have quite the scope for comedy that she does, and his performance lacks variety, but within its carefully circumscribed limits, it has a perverse heroism, freeing her at the end to seek herself in flight. We don't get inside Peck the way we do L'il Bit, but what the playwright and actor do show us is cautionary and deeply sad.

In addition to the two principles, the play's "Greek Chorus" (F.J. Hartland, Lissa Brennan and Allison Cahill) plays a variety of (mainly) dim-witted relatives, getting lots of laughs in the process. The firm, clarifying direction is by Linda Haston, and all the designers' work helps support the play.

Inevitably, there's rude language of different kinds, extended by double-entendre. Pedophilia, L'il Bit tells us, "has nothing to do with bicycling." This isn't a play to take young students too. For that reason alone, it's indeed a surprise to see it in Little Washington, even though that's a college town.

It's even more of a surprise to find such an ambitious little theater, using Equity actors and staging plays with polish and professionalism, in an intimate theater carved out of an old house. I say I just "discovered" Off The Wall, as though that were somehow to my credit, when it's actually been there right along, for a year. I've been meaning to get there to see what they can do, and I'm glad I finally made it. Thanks to artistic director Virginia Wall Gruenert and managing director Hans Gruenert, Washington apparently has a capable small professional theater in its midst. 

For the final performances (Fri.-Sat. 7:30 p.m.), call 724-873-3576 or visit www.insideoffthewall.com. Off The Wall is at 147 N. Main St. in Little Washington.