A playwright for 25 years, Durang is enjoyed in drama circles for his titillating works of satire and black comedy. His plays tend to balance on the tightrope of what is accepted as common decency, hilarious but always threatening to plunge into a difficult web of jokes in bad taste.
"Betty's Summer Vacation" satirizes an embarrassing element of American culture that deserves more than a little teasing. "The play really is about sensationalism," explained Roffman, who went on to cite the media's transformation of the Lorena Bobbitt and O.J. Simpson cases into daytime sagas-which was Durang's inspiration for the play.
The show begins innocently enough. Trudy (Julia Brownell '04) invites her friend Betty (Kat Vondy '02) for a relaxing stay at a beach-side cottage and, aside from Trudy's incessant chatting, everything seems to be in order. As the other tenants begin to arrive, it is soon apparent that Betty is the only character without want of psychiatric therapy-and the audience can't be sure that she'll maintain her sanity for long.
Keith (Mario Rojas '02), who is secretly a serial killer who carries the heads of his victims around in a hat box, is the first tenant to arrive at the cottage after Trudy and Betty. Buck's (Phil Tucker '03E) role as a dirty sexaholic is explicit from the beginning; his shameless pick-up lines are nothing more than flagrant propositions for intercourse. Mr. Vanislaw (Eric Feder '02), a homeless Russian guy, is equally indiscriminate with his love objects, but his seduction technique is more imaginative-he simply flings open his overcoat, flashing himself and dancing joyously.
Mrs. Seizmagraff (Kim Rosenstock '02) turns out to be Trudy's volatile mother who denies that Trudy was molested in her childhood and eats up the vending-machine-condom romance that Buck and Mr. Vanislaw offer. Trudy, on the other hand, prefers Keith because, even though he likes to tote severed body parts, they are intimately bonded by memories of child abuse. Brownell and Rosenstock's presentation of Trudy and Mrs. Seizmagraff's common meandering chatter and capricious moods promise to be a highlight of the presentation.
The most intriguing characters, however, are not tenants in the summer cottage. They are the mysterious voices (Keith Boynton '05E, Ethan Katz '02, Erica Sussman '02) that inexplicably permeate the building. They first act like a sitcom laugh track, move on to emit corny "awws" reminiscent of "Full House," occasionally comment on the action and become more demanding as the play bounces on. "It turns out that the voices are interested in very naughty things and they are sort of the collective audiences of 'Montel Williams' and 'Jerry Springer,'" said Roffman. "They represent the insatiable hunger that people have for gruesome things."
The play will be performed Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium.