The play starts off with tears and a train station as Beth (Autumn Dornfield) chooses suburban safety over sorority sister Laura (Marin Ireland). But although Laura can't forget Beth, she can't acknowledge her desires either, even when Jack (David Greenspan), a flamboyant older man, introduces her to Tennessee Williams plays, Greenwich Village bars, and Beebo Brinker (Jenn Colella). Several quick scenes of hormonal confusion later, Laura's shackin’ up with Beebo and the play's juices are flowing.
With her short-cropped hair and cuffed blue jeans, Beebo's obviously bad news, and two years of cohabitation turns her into the Stanley Kowalski of Bleecker Street. But time has taught Laura to accept her desires; even though she still pines for Beth, she escapes Beebo for an unusual arrangement with Jack.
Colella shows us that Beebo's trapped by her own raw potency: she's a woman who caricatures masculinity and lacks self-awareness. But Colella swaggers and sneers like she's the villain of the melodrama when she should be its goddess. Her Beebo isn't nearly dark enough or dangerous enough – she's a terrible rite of passage for young lesbians, not just kind of a dick.
Because Beebo's tastes run to fresh meat, she's fated to play the same role over and over. Beth, after a decade and two children, has left her husband to find Laura, and (as pulp would have it) she meets Beebo in the first lesbian dive she finds. Beebo, recognizing her once-time rival for Laura's love, finds sadistic pleasure in reuniting the former lovers. But she finds even more when Beth, learning that Laura's moved on, needs a place to stay. Dornfield's performance as Beth, however, is strictly squaresville: she fails to locate Beth's anguish, so that the climactic confrontation between her and Laura lacks punch.
The play's real center is Marin Ireland's Laura. Ireland traces Laura's arc carefully, starting off as a hysterical closet case. But by the play's midpoint, she's become a jaded, urbane scenester whose lesbian affair with Beebo is as suffocating as Beth's marriage. Late in the play, Ireland's hard poise suggests that Laura's grown worldly-wise, recognizing that her collegiate romance was mostly just youth and innocence. And her open arrangement with Jack can provide only a portion of satisfaction. Ireland knows that, fifty years ago, even the happiest ending for a lesbian was filled with compromises.
This truth holds “Beebo Brinker” together and provides depth to what could be a simple romp. Ireland and fellow actors Greenspan (one of the best actors Off-Broadway has) and Carolyn Beaumler (juicy in several smaller utility roles) deserve most of the credit though. Ryan and Chapman's adaptation retains too much narration and jumps in chronology. And sometimes Silverman's direction can't help interjecting a little camp, though mostly it's brisk and steers its cast away from irony.
“Beebo Brinker” may not be well-made theater, but pulp fiction isn't well-made literature. The pleasure's there and, sometimes, a few jewels as well.
Pictured:Carolyn Baeumler and Marin Ireland. Credit: Dixie Sheridan
"Beebo Brinker Chronicles" runs through April 27 at 37 Arts (450 W. 37th St.); tickets $46.25 - $56.25; 212.307.4100.
Produced by the Hourglass Group, written by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman, directed by Leigh Silverman
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