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Rapture, Blister, Burn Is an Exuberant Take on the State of Feminism in 2013
Play captures the cultural tension between ambition and family
Avery makes her first appearance with a black eye — was she beaten by her boyfriend? Kull's performance infuses Avery with eye-rolling sarcasm that's piercingly wise. She's also flummoxed by elder Alice's view that the syndrome of young women too easily "hooking up" with men removes men's incentive to make any commitments, or to grow up. It encourages and reinforces the very narcissism that my colleague, of Avery's generation, came to find so exasperating in her male counterparts.
In Cathy's seminar, topics slide from women's-choice advocate Betty Friedan to Phyllis Schlafly's belief that men should lead women — and all these female theorists get equal play, if not equal pay.
Cathy's fascination with torture porn stems from her own, highly un-PC fetishism — the kind of complication that allows the story to rise from being a dramatized lecture into being a drama.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL LAMONT
Amy Brenneman in Rapture, Blister, Burn
Location Info
Map
Geffen Playhouse
10886 Le Conte Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Category: Theaters
Region: Out of Town
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Meanwhile, a life of domesticity with Don and the kids drove Gwen to drink. She's now a recovered alcoholic, which allows Don and Cathy to reunite over many drinks, without Gwen. Gwen yearns to escape to New York with her teen son, to have at least some of Cathy's freedom.
Rapture settles upon a fresh spin on the relationship between love, co-dependence, ambition and a bank account.
Among the finest moments is a scene in which Cathy tries to encourage Don to write a book that might actually take off. His resistance to that idea, and to her imposition of potential success upon his lost potential, is a masterful insight into the divide between those with ambition and those who have lost it. She loves him so much that she's eventually willing to embrace and encourage his mediocrity, though that concept leaves her completely confused.
Though the play's having-it-all themes may be a bit threadbare by now, the insight into ambition and its loss is all murky, perverse, fascinating stuff, and Gionfriddo goes in with a needle and lifts it like a splinter from beneath some collective psychic skin into the public air.
RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN | By Gina Gionfriddo | A Playwrights Horizons production at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Wstwd. | Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through Sept. 22 | (310) 208-5454 | geffenplayhouse.com
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