Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Katie Forgette’s memory play about a personal crisis she endured as a precocious teenager in the early ‘70s is self-admittedly slight; though it is set in a devout Catholic family full of women who are suffering in various ways under the patriarchy, there will be nothing of the post-Vatican II seismic shifts in Church culture here. The parish priest is still omnipotent, the women of the house still circle Dad like frustrated planets that cannot escape his gravitational pull, and while Roe vs. Wade’s promise of legal abortion may be imminent out there, in here, sex means pregnancy and pregnancy mean kids. Most of the time, anyway: Aunt Terri (Shana Wride) never had any children of her own, but look where that got her: on the outs with her man and living with her sister and her sister’s tyrannical, bedridden mother-in-law.
The play’s real achievement is in hiding how hard and how effectively it works to draw the viewer in to the point where that slight story satisfies, and maybe even matters. Chief credit must go to Samantha Gorjanc’s thoroughly winning performance as star and narrator, her addresses to the audience aided by frozen action and a bit of spotlight. A modern daughter in her situation would surely be incandescent with resentment and rage; Gorjanc makes us believe in a dynamic that leaves her merely desperate — and not a little embarrassed. Not because she is oppressed, but because she is in a certain sort of family at a certain point in time. Even when she fights back, she is careful to show respect to her mother, rendered here as a titan of resilience and love by Erin Noel Grennan. You have to really like these women — aunt, daughter, mother — for the play to work. I did. Only at the end, when Forgette widens her scope and starts scanning the horizon for larger meaning, did it start to lose its gentle hold on my affections.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, November 24, 2024
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 8pm |