Good Marriage

The ART does right by Durang

by Anne Marie Donahue

THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO, By Christopher Durang. Directed by Marcus Stern. Set design by Molly Hughes. Costumes by Karen Eister. Lighting by John Ambrosone. Sound by John Huntington. With Matt Chiorini, Caroline Hall, Karen MacDonald, Thomas Derrah, Kristin Flanders, Sophia Fox-Long, Randall Jaynes, Paula Plum, Will LeBow, and Remo Airaldi. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre at the Hasty Pudding Theatre through November 8.

The dead babies. The jabs at the Catholic Church. The surrealistic air and absurdist edge. The Marriage of Bette and Boo has many elements of standard-issue Chris Durang. But it also has something less often seen in Durang's work. It has heart, and the American Repertory Theatre's affecting and bizarrely funny production hardly misses a beat.

Durang's 1985 play is generally considered autobiographical. Durang admits as much, and the author essentially walks us through his play in the transparent guise of Bette and Boo's son Matt, who functions as narrator (and was played in the original production by Durang). But the play is better understood as a highly imaginative biography of the playwright's extended family. Although the Durang character is in it, he's not truly of it, and he doesn't even attempt to explain how the events he recounts shaped his own psyche. From the start, Matt stands apart, sifting through the lives of his parents and their families in an attempt to discern why they went so wretchedly wrong. Although he never achieves a clear understanding, he finds the compassion he needs to begin to forgive.

There's nothing remarkable or dramatic about Bette and Boo's rotten marriage. They wed in haste, lock horns over Boo's drinking, and have a baby. Bette hopes that parenthood will bring them closer together, but it doesn't. Boo, like his father, seeks escape in the bottle. Like her mother, Bette expects that a large family will make her happy. After Matt, however, she births only corpses, four stillborns in monotonous succession. Bette nags, Boo drinks; Boo drinks, Bette nags.

In its outline, the story is sadly familiar; it's the quirky particulars that make it both riotously funny and wrenchingly sad. And the ART cast gives those details the comic polish and gritty pathos Durang demands. Caroline Hall, as Bette, strikes the difficult balance between infantile idiocy and mature, if myopic, determination. Particularly when the character is mourning the dead babies she names after characters from Winnie the Pooh, Hall exposes the vulnerability and maternal longing beneath Bette's ludicrousness. Although Randall Jaynes sometimes underplays the brooding Boo, his portrayal is convincing in the context provided by Will LeBow and Paula Plum, who play his parents, Karl and Soot. LeBow, who looks as if he could be Jaynes's father, adopts a similarly laconic manner that underscores his character's moral lassitude. Although Jaynes's Boo isn't as casually cruel or as misogynistic as LeBow's Karl, he's clearly his father's son. As Boo's abused and self-protectively obtuse mom, Paula Plum is a brittle diva of ditz in most of her scenes. In the end, however, she brings an odd and startling dignity to Soot, who could easily have come off as nothing more than her nasty husband's dingbat doormat.

Whereas Soot refuses to acknowledge unpleasant realities, at least until she finally snaps and collapses, Bette's mom, Margaret, sees them but quickly shoos them away. Karen MacDonald plays Margaret as a crisp matron with a superficial grace that masks her dirty maternal secret. Because MacDonald lays the groundwork, that secret makes shocking sense when it's revealed. Sophia Fox-Long adds dimension to the flat, if amusing, part of Bette's fragile, fanatically religious sister. As fecund, unhappily wed other sister Joan, Kristin Flanders is given little to act but arch bitterness, which she conveys with crack timing. Timing coupled with sharp mime and chutzpah make Thomas Derrah a standout as Bette's stroke-stricken father, who can utter only garbled sounds. Remo Airaldi is equally funny, but far less subtle, in the double part of the maternity-ward doctor and the spiritually flaccid Father Donnally.

Airaldi's priest is marred by two dodgy directorial decisions. The first, and lesser, is one of omission: Father Donnally's much-ballyhooed imitation of a slab of frying bacon is completely obscured by the surrounding spectators. The second is the addition of a couple cheap sight gags that put Matt and Karl in bed with the depraved padre. ART associate director Marcus Stern's third faux pas is his decision to cast Matt Chiorini as Matt. A student at the ART's Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, Chiorini lacks the confidence and finesse to pull off this difficult role. Otherwise, Stern does his actors --and Durang -- quite proud.