Rapture, Blister, Burn

The pocket-sized Ensemble Theatre runs a juicy sideline of smart off-Broadway plays not considered enticing enough by the bigger companies. Exactly a year after successfully staging Gina Gionfriddo’s excellent Becky Shaw, the company now presents her equally bracing new play, a 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Rapture, Blister, Burn may have an obscure and unhelpful title, but this challenging depiction of smart 40-somethings living with the consequences of youthful choices is whip-smart and always compelling.

At its centre are two former college roommates. Catherine (Georgie Parker) has become a feminist media studies academic, appearing regularly on big city TV and publishing such tomes as Cruel Appetites: Internet Pornography, September 11th, and the Rise of Degradation as Entertainment. Gwen (Anne Tenny), meanwhile, is now an edgy, domesticated wife and mother. Their wildly different lives are linked by the never-forgotten fact that Gwen married Catherine’s boyfriend Don (Glenn Hazledine), now an unfulfilled, porn-watching Dean (“my drive’s sorta gone”) at a minor college.

When Catherine returns home to look after her mother (Diane Craig), who is recovering from a heart attack, old flames are rekindled, old wounds are opened. Catherine teaches a course (Module 3: Torture, Horror and Sadistic Pornography) that is attended by Gwen and 21-year-old Avery (Chloe Bayliss). Avery, representing a new generation of women “with reduced inhibitions”, assesses her elders with an unflinching cool. “You either have a career and wind up lonely and sad,” she observes, “or you have a family and wind up lonely and sad.”

There are long and static scenes of teaching and discussing feminist theory and history, but the text is so strong and the all-round acting so marvelously naturalistic it’s a splendid challenge to keep up.

When buried passions overwhelm reasoned discussions Hazledine, Tenny, Craig and Bayliss bring great skill to the zinging dialogue. Georgie Parker is particularly compelling as the sharply intelligent (yet very unhappy) academic.

Director Sandra Bates excellently orchestrates the play’s swings and surprises on a setting by Graham Maclean that places three separate interiors in exactly the same space. This takes some getting used to, but allows the many scene breaks to be achieved either instantly or within seconds.

Frank Hatherley

Images: (top) Diane Craig and Georgie Parker &  (lower) Chloe Bayliss, Diane Craig and Georgie Parker in Rapture, Blister, Burn. Photos by Steve Lunam