How I Learned to Drive
Almost exactly 25 years ago, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse co-starred in the Off-Broadway opening of How I Learned to Drive, a drama that deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Incredibly, they’re back in the same roles for the play’s Broadway premiere—“older, for sure, but delivering performances that now feel even wiser.” Paula Vogel’s timeless work recounts “in exquisitely poignant detail” the sexual grooming by a middle-aged man of his underage niece. It’s told from the perspective of Parker’s character, looking back on her uncle’s process of predation, which began in early childhood and culminated when he was called upon to teach her to drive. “The subject was raw and difficult back then. It remains so.”
Despite the heavy subject matter, “there is, somehow, much humor in the play,” said Tim Teeman in The Daily Beast. One-onones between Parker’s Li’l Bit and Morse’s Uncle Peck are intercut with scenes featuring three other actors, who each play multiple roles, including other members of the
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York City ★★★★ family. The audience can’t help but laugh “when mother, grandmother, and granddaughter get together to talk men, sphincter muscles, and skillet pans heavy enough to conk their menfolk on the head with.” But the secondary characters also show how Li’l
Bit’s objectification and abuse was ignored, or tacitly permitted, by her family. In one “stunning” scene, Uncle Peck’s wife, played by Johanna Day, delivers a speech in which she blames Li’l Bit for seducing her husband. In doing so, she “reveals herself to be another victim of patriarchal grooming.”
Still, this production is anchored by Parker and Morse, “who, in these roles, would overshadow even some beloved stage veterans,” said Maya Phillips in The New York Times. Both actors deliver “crushing performances—sentimental and horrific, utterly complex.” Morse’s Uncle Peck “invites the audience to fall under his character’s spell,” just as Li’l Bit did. Meanwhile, I can only assume that the Friedman Theatre has a fountain of youth somewhere backstage; “I don’t have another explanation for Parker’s agelessness.” The two actors are riveting together, and even on Broadway, it’s “rare to encounter the kind of breathless silence” I experienced when the audience watched one especially tense scene unfold. “If I could direct a scene representing why I love theater, it would look something like this.”