That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play

What more can you say about feminism? Men are pigs and women wallow in discriminatory crap. Women absorb the ideology of a male-dominated society and use it against their sisters. Men feel guilty but still want to dominate. What is a wily young playwright to do? Sheila Callaghan seems to have put third-wave feminism, Gen-Y gender confusion and macho writerly clichs in a blender set to high speed. Her manic, angry, deftly constructed That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play whipsaws between laughs and squirms as Callaghan trawls the mucky depths of male-constructed femininity.

Fans of Pirandello and Dennis Potter will recognize Callaghan’s main stylistic strategy: driving a wedge between her characters and their onstage, equally fictitious author. Agnes (Lisa Joyce) and Valerie (Danielle Slavick) are gorgeous, gun-toting she-devils on a Thelma & Louise--meets--Kill Bill road trip trolling the country to pick off pro-life right-wing dudes. In a surreal, nonlinear plot, we follow these ladies through their profane and cartoonish exploits, dip into a sadistic dinner party and come out on the other end to meet Owen (Greg Keller), a neurotic screenwriter who wants to make a movie that his mother could love. Along the way, Callaghan throws in a superficially strong but masochistic Jane Fonda (Annie McNamara) and, for good measure, Jell-O wrestling.

It’s not as dark or substantive as it could be, but the author is imaginative enough to avoid preachiness. Director Kip Fagan’s extremely talented cast (Joyce, a consistently engaging performer, gets to show off her comic chops) navigates the nihilism and hurt of the script. Perhaps by saying several things at once about sexism and desire, Callaghan speaks something new.—David Cote

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