17th Play - Scarcity by Lucy Thurber
Marc Pracht (Herb), Jacqueline Grandt (Martha), Emily Tate (Ellen), Ada Grey (Rachel) and Brendan Meyer (Billy) in Redtwist Theatre’s 2016 Chicago production.
Wish I’d seen this Redtwist show! With the amazing Marc Pracht and Jacqueline Grandt, not to mention young Ada Grey (who I just saw all grown up doing lovely work in Buddha’s Birthday with Lucid Theater), this show must have been a powerhouse!
Summary: “In a small town in Western Massachusetts, the Lawrence family struggles with poverty, boredom and lost potential. Into this isolated town comes Ellen, a highly educated, wealthy and well-traveled young woman who wants to give back to her country through education. She starts teaching in the public high school where Billy and Rachel Lawrence go, and she develops an obsession with Billy’s intelligence, insight and potential. Her obsession and desire to lift Billy out of poverty tears the family apart.” Dramatists Play Service
Laura’s thoughts in brief: Whew, this one is a doozy. I enjoy a doozy of a play, though, and am really sorry I didn’t see it at Redtwist. Interestingly, there were mixed responses to this play - some raves and some folks thinking that all of the characters were little more than two-dimensional stereotypes. I would disagree with that, although there were moments in the play where that did feel true. For one thing, stereotypes exist for a reason, because certain patterns get repeated in life. The playwright is trying to tell the story of characters struggling to emerge from a life full of these stereotypes. Not that I’m championing stereotypes in playwriting, but I think if you dig a little deeper, each character has a moment or a few where they ascend from the stereotypes from which they are drawn. And for some of the characters, I would disagree that they were stereotypes at all. No character is truly unscathed by this play, though - the “do-gooder” teacher Ellen seems so pure (“Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” Thank you, Adam Ant), but what she does do is lust after her student Billy, even as she’s trying to help him escape his terrible home-life. Icky. And Billy is no sweet and innocent young thing either - he knows what he’s doing as he uses his sex appeal to try to make his escape. And young Rachel is fun and interesting, and the one we have the most empathy for, but even she is trying to manipulate people and things to save herself. The world of this play is icky, and it’s why I stopped watching Shameless. I just couldn’t spend my free time living there. But in theatre, living somewhere different for a only a couple of hours is how we learn and grow - we don’t have to go there every week. I thought living in Scarcity’s world was rough, but it made me want to help others get out of it. And then I realized that in Ellen, the playwright showed us the potential pitfalls of that sympathy as well. It’s just not that simple, is it? I think that’s clever. My only real complaint about Scarcity was that I thought the play ended too quickly - once again I was surprised that it was over. Re-reading the ending, I see Thurber pointing to how things change in some ways and stay the same in others (the mother, Martha is talking about wanting to have another baby, yikes!), but I was unsatisfied with the ending. Perhaps a good director would make that clearer…
READ MORE! Here’s what others had to say about productions:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/theater/reviews/21scar.html
https://www.newcitystage.com/2016/09/14/americas-pale-underbelly/
https://stageandcinema.com/2016/09/11/scarcity/
https://chicagoontheaisle.com/2016/09/13/review-of-scarcity-by-lucy-thurber-at-redtwist-theatre/