'Bette and Boo' marital bliss?

By Julia Dahl

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH 'The Marriage of Bette and Boo' at the Cabaret

The play begins with the marriage of Bette (Brooks Ann Camper, DRA '98) and Boo (Sean Libby, DRA '00). The "I do's" are exchanged in front of both families, and Bette and Boo leave for their honeymoon. Soon afterward, Bette becomes pregnant, and, like all expectant mothers, she muses over possible names for her baby. Bette settles on Skippy, after her favorite movie, Winnie the Pooh, and decides that all subsequent children will also have Pooh Corner-inspired names: Tigger, Eeyore, and Pooh. Trouble is, Bette's babies keep dying.

Each time Bette is about to give birth, both families gather at the hospital, poised and ready with hand-puppets and squeaky dolls; then the doctor enters, throws the baby to the ground and pronounces it dead. All this upsets Bette greatly, so she tries again, and again, and again to have more children. Meanwhile, Bette's infantile sister Emily (played wittily by Claudia Arenas, DRA '99) is institutionalized and her husband Boo takes to the bottle.

The play revolves around Bette, who traipses around the theatre in her wedding dress and black platform heels. She is a woman desperately in need of love, yet completely unable to cope with the realities of marriage. As Bette, Camper carries each scene in which she appears and grapples almost effortlessly with an amazing range of emotions. Her face never lies and her energy is completely electric throughout.

Libby's Boo is the only nearly sane character, so it's no wonder he turns to drink. Bette brings him again and again to a priest, insisting that he sign a contract promising to give up drinking. Yet with the babies dying left and right and the parents into S&M, he falls off the wagon every time.

The weakest characters in the show are Bette and Boo's parents. All are "wacky," but in a terribly, mundane way. The one exception is Bette's father, Paul, who mumbles incessantly as if he had marbles in his mouth, but even this is little more than a cheap gimmick and becomes tedious. Although overdone, Paul's handicap does suggest Durang's theme of the impossibility of human communication. Bette and Boo just can't seem to get it together.

"I'm tired of feeling alone talking to you!" Bette cries just before she decides to divorce him. There's so much going on inside everyone's minds that they can't see what's going on around them. In one particularly entertaining scene, Bette's family comes to the house for Thanksgiving dinner and Emily spills gravy on the carpet. Boo tries to vaccum the mess as Bette screams and screams. "I just want to get it through his head that you don't vaccum gravy!" she whines, tired of fighting.

Two performances worth mentioning are Eve Cuadrado, GRD '03, as Bette's cynical sister Joanie and Mark Novm, DRA '00, as Bette's son. Cuadrado's role is small and confined mostly to put-downs and come-backs, yet she shines and picks up more than her share of laughs. Novom, however is so uncomfortable on stage that I almost felt sorry for him.

Director Mahayana Landowne, DRA '98, makes beautiful use of the Cabaret space, though I often felt as though I was attending an indoor tennis match as the players shuffled back and forth between sides of the performance space.

If Durang is anything, he is consistent. The show maintained interest and energy throughout and the audience seemed genuinely amused.

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