Domestic abuse, mental issues and challenges associated with raising a special needs child are all front and center subjects explored in Venus Theatre's latest production, "God Don' Like Ugly," but at the end of the day, it boiled down to freedom for the production's diverse and complicated characters.
Written by Oxford-based playwright Doc Andersen-Bloomfield and running through April 12, the play takes the audience on an intense journey through a one-time special day for a family that takes many twists and turns along a road, ending up tragic for some and a freedom experience for others.
Set in a Texas town, the play opens with a messy-haired young woman dressed in a green khaki jumpsuit walking in and babbling, while holding a broom for a microphone as she loudly sings along with the radio to the Andrews Sisters version of "I Don't Know Why" (I love you like I do). The 36-year-old woman, Esme, played by Cathryn Benson, is hyper and prone to the unpredictable outbursts of a child. Benson has the mannerisms of a special-needs child locked down and is believable as she delivers her lines with a slurred speech while her eyes seem unfocused and constantly wandering.
"She's a powerhouse," Andersen-Bloomfield said.
Benson acts out the role of the often-times loud and expressive Esme so superbly that instead of being annoying, she comes off as loveable, humorous without knowing it and frank and honest, as only a child can be. Benson stays in character and never seems to lose that childlike innocence throughout the production's tumultuous plot, with Esme at its center. But Esme's mother Bessie, played by local theater veteran Nancy Blum, is often at her wits end when dealing with Esme.
"I feel like I've been on a leash for 36 years," Bessie said. "The doctor said you wouldn't live past 15, 16 at the most. The doctors lied."
Esme has a twin sister, Ella Margaret, also played by Benson, and it's their birthday, but Ella Margaret is not there. Dressed in a thin, short-sleeved flowered house coat with wire-rimmed glasses on her nose, Bessie looks a bit like the Momma character from The Carol Burnett Show and acts like her, too, when it comes to her daughters.
She has nothing but good things to say about Ella Margaret, but constantly criticizes the likeable Esme, saying her penchant for repeating people's words like a parrot is "her one good talent."
"We all have our crosses to bear. Mine will be with me until the day I die," Bessie says, referring to Esme, who only smiles as she dances around the yard in a world of her own.
As the play progresses, Bessie refuses to make a birthday cake to celebrate the twins' birthday until Ella Margaret returns, which upsets Esme. The audience finds out later that Esme knows the exact whereabouts of her twin sister. So does Bessie, but refuses to face reality. Esme uses her imagination in telling the story of how a stranger came one day and Ella Margaret fell in love with him and left. Ella Margaret only makes cameo appearances in dramatic dance routines with the stranger, played by Gray West in his first performance at Venus Theatre.
In another cameo appearance, it is revealed that the stranger was abusive to Ella Margaret. About that time, a badly bruised woman, SJ, stops by the house asking for directions to a relative's home.
SJ, played by Ann Fraistat, is a Venus regular and her veteran acting skills are so honed that no one would know that she received the script two days before opening night, when the original actor had to be replaced for personal reasons.
"That's never happened to me before but I learned the script and went with it," Fraistat said.
SJ is running from an abusive husband and is terrified that he will find her and kill her.
"He finds me every time I leave and he beats me," she says. "I go to the police but they don't do anything."
Bessie takes SJ in and is very protective of her, sometimes confusing her for Ella Margaret. With the entrance of SJ and eventually her abusive husband, the plot intensifies as truths are revealed leading up to an explosive ending.
The oldies music played throughout the play, as well as the lighting, sets the mood for the ups and downs of the characters. Andersen-Bloomfield says she chose all of the music for the production
"The music needed to be right and I sang every song as I wrote it [the play]," she said. "I played all the parts, reciting lines like Esme [would talk], throwing tantrums and rolling around the floor. My husband thought I was crazy."
The Venus Theatre production marks the premiere of "God Don' Like Ugly." It was originally staged in London as a short, to not-so-kind reviews, Andersen-Bloomfield said.
"I was told it was not a Brit play and couldn't work at a longer length. So you know what I did? Over the next two-and-a-half months, I completed it as a full-length script," Andersen-Bloomfield said with a loud laugh.
She praised the setting Randall designed with Amy Belschner-Rhodes. Blum's character Bessie could be found most often sitting at a table on a wood porch with a screen front door. Esme on the other hand was usually performing in the small yard or using her imagination to work on a rusted out, abandoned-looking Volkswagen that once belonged to her twin sister.
Andersen-Bloomfield said she had a large stage in mind when she wrote "God Don' Like Ugly," and was surprised when Venus Theatre founder Deborah Randall, the play's director, selected it for her 30-seat venue.
"But a play can be staged anywhere. I was just glad she wanted to do my play," she said. "I love this intimate space and she's done an amazing job with it here."
Randall said she chose the play because it had a feel of playwright Tennessee Williams to it and because "the characters are largely defined by what is not said and that seemed a challenge to take on."
"God Don' Like Ugly" runs through April 12, Thursdays through Sundays at Venus Theatre on C Street.