The Marriage of Bette and Boo

Theater
REVIEW
"The Marriage of Bette & Boo"
$9-$12. Dad's Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. N.E. Through May. 404-523-
3141.The verdict: Sublime misanthropy.
Strange bedfellows
Durang's comic `Marriage' skewers domesticity

BYLINE: Mark Binelli FOR THE JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
DATE: May 9, 1997
PUBLICATION: The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution
EDITION: The Atlanta Journal Constitution
SECTION: PREVIEW
PAGE: P9

Christopher Durang still appreciates a good dead-baby joke.

While most of us mature past this level of jest somewhere around pre- adolescence, Durang understands the comic value of leading sacred cows to the slaughterhouse. Along with stillborn infants, his outrageous "The Marriage of Bette & Boo" laughs at (not with) Catholic priests, alcoholics, the mentally ill and graduate students. It's epic misanthropy, inflated to outrageous proportions in a spirited, relentlessly funny Dad's Garage Theatre production. Nic Garcia stars as Matthew, the play's narrator and the only son of Bette (Kathleen Wattis) and Boo (John P. Gregorio). Emerging from the wings, he wryly introduces, comments upon and occasionally takes part in the action, all with a sort of doctoral-thesis dispassion. "If one looks hard enough," Matthew claims, in between Thomas Hardy references, "one can see order beneath the surface."

In the case of Matthew's family, one would need a pretty powerful microscope. Bette is a vacuous breeder, her life a series of miscarriages and mindlessly babbled monologues. She met Boo, she chirps immediately after the wedding, "sort of on the rebound ---he seems fine, though." But Boo insists on calling his dad about an insurance deal from their honeymoon bed, and he drinks, leading to heated arguments along the lines of "You can't vacuum gravy!"

Of course, the title couple's dysfunction is all relative to the rest of the extended family. Bette's sister Emily (a brilliant Heidi Cline) never quite calms her nerves enough to join the convent or to recover from a traumatic bout of stage fright involving a cello. Her sister Joan (Suzanne T. Horton) is as mean as she is pregnant. Father Paul (Ron Prather) speaks an unintelligible, mush-mouthed dialect, while mother Margaret (Sally J. Robertson) calmly knits and intones, "Paul, I've asked you not to speak. We can't understand you!"

As for Boo's side of the family tree, there's his cackling punching bag of a mother, Soot (Mary Ellen McCall), and her unbelievably cruel husband, Karl (Peter Haloulos), who also drinks and whose favorite phrase seems to be "Soot, you're the dumbest white woman alive!"

Obviously, "Bette & Boo" isn't for all tastes. Durang will seem sadistic and condescending to some, and to a degree, he's shooting fish in a barrel by taking aim at such grotesque caricatures. But there's something to be said for shock value, and Durang fleshes out all the inspired nastiness with a tireless wit.

Director David Crowe, meanwhile, proves equally gifted at satire, wrangling his large cast through a multitude of short, snappy scenes with much dexterity. Whether Matthew is explaining the origins of the modern holiday (invented, he says, by "Sir Ethelberg Holiday, a sadistic Englishman") or Father Donnally (Rob Parnell) is delivering one of the most memorable sermons you're likely to hear in any denomination (it includes an imitation of sizzling bacon and the rhetorical question "Why did God make people so stupid?"), "Bette & Boo" remains a hilarious dose of cynicism that's the perfect antidote for saccharine times.

Boo (John P. Gregorio) finds himself saddled with two strange sisters-in- law, Emily (Heidi Cline, left) and Joan (Suzanne T. Horton), after marrying. / Dad's Garage Theatre