Bad Books by Sharyn Rothstein, Kitchen Theatre Company through Sept 21 kitchentheatre.org
A proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, Sharyn Rothsteins Bad Books, now playing in at the Kitchen Theatre Company in Emily Jackson’s pitch-perfect staging, seems at first glance a play about the culture clash and censorship. A debate play with two clearly drawn sides.
Scintillating and riotously funny, the play skates lightly on the absurd—stretching the increasing reality of conservative parent groups attacking curricula and the availability of ‘bad’ books into increasingly out of control encounters faced by the play’s control-freak of a protagonist, The Mother. This tricky role is played with tenderly mounting despair by Catherine D. DuBord. A tough cookie, a wounded warrior, an unsettled mother all become evident in her performance.
She is outraged that The Librarian has put a book entitled “Boob Juice” into the hands of her shy bookworm 15 year-old son. Rather than ban it, she wants it to be made inaccessible to non-adults. (It turns out it is primarily a YA book that includes consideration of an abortion in its story-line.)
She isn’t quite ready for a deliriously bad-ass librarian, profane and quick on the rhetorical draw. The artist Spinks plays her and two other women in the play (the mother’s mantra-spouting manager at a pharma company and a grieving book editor) with sharply edged comedy, both physical and vocal.
As the play unspools, two ideas about books emerge. One: they can be dangerous. Two: their danger is they offer a portal into imagination, empathy and information. Against this is posed the perennial terror of parenting: how to keep your kids safe.
Of course, Save Our Children was the 1980s anti-gay crusade of Anita Bryant. Bad Books honors the impulse while mourning the consequences of this feverish need to police the influencers of children (librarians, teachers, etc.) who may also have the child’s best interests at heart.
Rothstein has a marvelous facility with language—especially in some stream of consciousness monologues—and a way of bestowing grace on her characters while keeping the tragic undertow offstage.
A simple circle of carpet on the stage with two stained glass inspired towers, desk and book cart, by scenic designer Tyler M. Perry, well lit by Cora McKenna, with apt costuming from Ainsley Anderson and a smart soundscape from Lesley Greene provide a sharp environment for this culture clash. Artistic Director Jackson’s mounting has pace, clarity and strong comic shifts.
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