ARTSMONDAY: ‘Witherspoon’ Fails To Bloom in Boston

By evening on a weeknight, the last thing a student like me wants is more class. And yet I felt like I should be taking notes during The Lyric Stage of Boston’s pedantic production of “Miss Witherspoon,” by Christopher F. Durang ’71.

I should have known what I was getting into when I opened the press packet to find handouts on Durang’s religious inspirations and the first U.S. space station, Skylab. But in I went, naïve as a child—which turned out to be appropriate, since the play itself felt like a world religions unit in a third grade social studies class.

Anyone familiar with Durang’s work will know that he does not write for children. His best plays are good-naturedly wicked send-ups of life’s pain and absurdity. They mine comic gold from such unfunny topics as depression, divorce, alcoholism, and infant mortality (as in his “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” which the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club produced this fall).

“Miss Witherspoon” is not one of Durang’s best plays. Its whisper-thin plot barely covers what is essentially an exposition of the playwright’s personal theology. Miss Witherspoon (Paula Plum) commits suicide, and on her way through the “bardo” (a holding room for unfulfilled spirits that contains a curious mix of Eastern, Christian, and New Age religious ideas), learns to appreciate life on earth, finally making peace with the universe.

The scene opens on the title character weeping into a phone and bemoaning her failed life, which seems to comprise a string of bad break-ups and an even worse attitude. Unfortunately for our heroine, whoever is on the other line just won’t commiserate, and Witherspoon breaks off the conversation with that tried-and-true excuse, “I guess I’m just not in the mood to talk right now.”

The problem is, she seems to be very much in the mood to talk. Chunks of Skylab begin to fall from the sky, and fed up with it all, Witherspoon kills herself by standing right in their path. When the lights come up again, we find her perched on an armrest, explaining why Skylab is crashing to earth in a way that seems more like a fourth-grade teacher than one of Durang’s trademark paranoid neurotics.

Plum is an expert at mugging for laughs: she is at the top of her game portraying reincarnated roles such as a couple of babies (with the help of beautiful head-puppets from set designer Janie E. Howland), as well as a loyal house dog. Unfortunately, her warm and approachable acting style doesn’t do well on Durang’s twisted humor, and her performance comes out shallow, gimmicky, and shrill.

As the play continues, Witherspoon’s suicides get more and more outlandish. In her first reincarnation, a two-week-old Witherspoon gets the pet dog to do her dirty work. She makes it to 12 years old the second time, but overdoses on pills purchased from the playground drug-dealer—and so on. But every time things start to get fun, Witherspoon winds up back in the bardo where she, along with the audience, is subjected to yet another (after-) life-lesson from her painfully chipper spiritual guide, Maryamma (Mala Bhattacharya).

The supporting cast members, each of whom plays multiple roles, do better than Plum on the material. Marianna Bassham is a hoot as a Connecticut uber-mommy, and Horatio Sanz look-alike Larry Coen digs into the play’s absurdism, especially when he appears as Gandalf (yes, that Gandalf).

Most of the blame for this not-quite-good production goes to director Scott Edmiston, who directed “Miss Witherspoon” as a light-hearted take on dark themes. Such an interpretation misses the point of the play. Durang is dark first, funny later, and Edmiston’s direction leaves the play in dramatic limbo—not quite sad, but not quite funny, either.

At one point, Miss Witherspoon describes herself as “a woman with poor follow-through and little bravery,” which is a pretty apt way to describe the production as a whole. On the bright side, I did pick up a few pointers on how to cleanse my aura.

—Reviewer Jillian J. Goodman can be reached at jjgoodm@fas.harvard.edu.