I saw the Roundabout Theatre's production of The Marriage of Bette and Boo. It was a great production and several days after seeing it, I'm still thinking of it quite a bit. It's one of the few plays I think I could see again and again.
I had seen a production when I was in high school at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I still think that production was the best you could possibly see of the play. They absolutely nailed it in every way. However, the Roundabout's production had very different goals and it achieved them, so I can't fault the Roundabout too much. Their production was less of a caricature and more of a real, grounded play. And it works both ways.
Typically, I wouldn't recommend a Christopher Durang play to too many people. They are darkly comic, sadistic, and often painful things. The Marriage of Bette and Boo is certainly no different. However, all of his other plays end in total chaos and absurdity. This one always stays so close to home that you can't escape it.
I had remembered a lot of the lines. I could recite almost entire scenes. However, once it got to the end, it all felt new. There were certain scenes I had no memory of whatsoever. I think they are the sort of concepts that someone young could simply never understand. For instance, at the end of the play, the main characters are in a hospital room and reminiscing on their lives together. After watching these characters at each other's throats the entire time, I don't think I understood when I was younger how you can look back on something like and laugh. I didn't understand how a couple could go through a divorce and still call each other during difficult emotional times. Christopher Durang is making a joke at the end by showing them laughing at what are genuinely horrific moments in his childhood. But there's something existential there as well. What are we supposed to do? Harbor resentment that these awful things had happened? Consider our lives a waste because they didn't live up to our expectations? Even if you hated the person you spent the majority of your life with, at the end, it's still the person that you went through life with. Who else are you going to turn to?
It was during this scene I could have easily burst out sobbing for the rest of the play. David and I were with two of our friends, so I had to keep my composure.
If you're in New York, I highly recommend going to see The Marriage of Bette and Boo. There are few people that would not recognize some of their family in the play. It feels good to laugh at people for whom I normally would have lost all sense of humor. And if you're willing to go on the emotional journey, the play brings one to a beautiful catharsis.
