In the world of theater, few things are riskier for an artist, or an audience, than the staging of an original play. When that risk plays off, however, there’s nothing more mutually rewarding.
Which brings us to “Hysteria!”, upstart Wilmington theater company Ladyfolk Productions‘ delightful debut, a thematically sprawling, highly personal, often funny and occasionally emotional theatrical send-up of sexism over the centuries, from the Garden of Eden to the present day.
Co-written and co-directed by Meghan Cook and Jesslyn Wilson, familiar figures on Wilmington’s comedy scene, the play is suffused with passion and, in the best possible way, artistic ambition, making “Hysteria!” a feel-good comedy about a deeply troubling subject, its flaws easily forgivable thanks to its righteous spirit.
After opening Nov. 5 at the historic North Front Theatre in downtown Wilmington, “Hysteria!” finishes its run with four performances Nov. 12-15.
The show is presented as a series of sketches that are loosely connected in a way that becomes clearer as the play goes on, with the common thread of women being both dismissed and actively suppressed throughout history.
The time-traveling play starts at the beginning, as it were, with a crackling comic scene set in the Garden of Eden, an assured Wilson playing an incredulous Eve who stands up to a satanic puppet snake (Murphy Turner, hiss-terical), a rock-dumb Adam (Steve Marcinowski, comic timing spot-on) and God Himself.
The action then moves to Colonial America at the time of the Salem witch trials, with Jamie Harwood and Katherine Rosner as unmarried women (“It is not safe to be unwed”) accused of witchcraft by a drunken lout (Brendan Carter, aptly unsettling) angry over his spurned advances.
Then to the recent past, where a bonkers scene set in a middle school classroom has rambunctious boys (Joe Basquill, Jackson Cole and others) writing video-game-inspired drivel while a plucky, lisping girl (Wilson again) weaves an age-inappropriate tale of futuristic romantasy titled “In the Throes of Apocalyptic Passion.”
Then back to turn-of-the-20th-century America, where a panel of puppet doctors prescribes various quacky cures for “hysteria” or “virgin’s disease” in women, making such eyebrow-raising pronouncements as, “Women can’t have heart problems,” which would be funny if the diagnosis wasn’t based on historical fact.
It’s all played for laughs but with an underlying horror that bursts to the surface when a smiling doctor (Turner, gaslightingly creepy) decides that extracting the teeth of a young woman (Georgia Cole) will cure what ails her.
Then to a “Housewives”-like reality show, “Finding the Perfect Woman,” with women pitted against each other for the affections of a feckless, Seacrest-ian host played to the hilt by Basquill. Then to a cursed book club reading of “In the Throes of Apocalyptic Passion” at which some mother-daughter issues gradually come to a head.
There is A Lot Going On, safe to say, and if the action can feel occasionally over-stuffed, the humor hit-and-miss, the set changes clunky at times, the play never loses its heart. During a late-show rug pull that deals with mental health, the tonal shift is extreme but not unwarranted as the comedy’s underlying seriousness takes center stage, uniting themes both societal and personal in a way that elicited tears of recognition from some in the audience during Sunday’s matinee.
Along the way, the play doesn’t just call out (incompetent, unsupportive, predatory) men, but also women who turn on each other (“by damning us you have damned yourself”) or who characterize women who stand up for themselves as “political.” Georgia Cole takes her time-traveling character on a redemptive arc from submissive to, with a little help from her friends, emotionally assertive.
The show also features a super-cool, Eden-inspired set design by Tym Dvorak, along with a moody, industrial-punk soundtrack by Wilmington musician Billy Heathen.
It all builds to a cathartic audience sing-along to — what else? — Shania Twain’s bum-bum-ba-da-da-bum-bum-tastic anthem “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, a fittingly exuberant end to a joyful show, born of pain, whose roar is a thing of beauty.
Reporting by John Staton, Wilmington StarNews / Wilmington StarNews
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