Ada Grey, Jacqueline Grandt and Mark Pracht/Photo: Jan Ellen Graves
RECOMMENDED
The people of the white underclass have become unwanted stars in an unexpected American show. Their trials and tribulations have been mocked on reality television and nakedly scrutinized in two highly rated books, “Hillbilly Elegy” and “White Trash.” Angry elements of the group have been ruthlessly exploited by the bloviating, inflammatory presidential campaign of Donald Trump. In “Scarcity,” Lucy Thurber’s drama about disabling dysfunction among the white poor in small town nowhere, a fictional family of similar circumstance is put through the wringer.
“Scarcity” has come just in time. Mounted by Redtwist Theatre in a little room that puts the audience members virtually on stage with the players, the show packs a real gut punch. It allows us to experience a little of the real pain, anger, anxiety, confusion and claustrophobia that the white poor feel as they try to make their way through a country and culture that has long favored whites—as long as they’re rich or middle class.
As the play opens, family members are dismantling one another, railing—in high volume—over matters large and small. The clan includes an alcoholic, perpetually unemployed husband (Mark Pracht), a breadwinning but compulsively cynical wife (Jacqueline Grandt), an ambitious teenaged son (Brendan Meyer) and a penetrating, perceptive pre-teen daughter (Ada Grey), who absorbs everything that goes on.
And that’s a lot for any young child to endure: poverty, discrimination, violence, adultery, rape and potential incest all permeate the setting. There seems to be only one hope: The son is given the chance to apply to a private high school that could be his ticket to greater things. Will family members rally to his cause?
This family is an American tragedy but the biggest victim may be the daughter. Everyone leans on her emotionally while mostly ignoring her needs and pleads. Even before private school becomes an issue, the husband and wife fixate on their son and what will become of him. Meanwhile, the girl languishes, her gradual disappointment and decline registered in the precociously resourceful face of Ada Grey. It’s a powerful performance in a biting, bitter look at the white-hot matters of America’s heart and soul. (Michael Amedeo)
Redtwist Theatre, 1044 West Bryn Mawr, (773)728-7529, redtwist.org, $30-$35. Through October 9.
Related Stories
Out of the Woods: A Review of In To America at Griffin Theatre Company The politics of “In To America” align neatly with my own. The interviews with both voluntary and involuntary immigrants are broad. We hear from Native American, Polish, Thai and Cameroonian characters as well as others brought over in the diaspora. It’s not a propaganda-strewn romanticization of our country or its founders. The production has polish, well-oiled joints and seamless transitions between monologues. It’s…
The America That Never Was: A Review of Death of a Salesman at Redtwist Theatre RECOMMENDED The American Dream—the belief that what fulfills life is prosperity, what determines prosperity is work and that work glazed over with a little sheen of popular appeal guarantees respect—has been languishing the length of its existence. Perhaps never more so than among the so-called millennials, who are said to disdain puritan ideals of toil, reject capitalist faith in private…
Made In America: A Review of Ragtime at Griffin Theatre Company RECOMMENDED Griffin Theatre Company closes out its 2016-17 season with a very lofty and lavishly produced staging of “Ragtime.” Based on a novel by E.L. Doctorow, “Ragtime” opened in Toronto in 1996 before moving to Broadway a couple of years later where it earned thirteen Tony Award nominations before being edged out by “The Lion King” for Best Musical. Originally…
Stuck In Place: A Review of Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate at… The premiere of Antoinette Nwandu's new comedy at Victory Gardens is no laughing matter, literally.
