How I Learned To Drive
Opening Night: February 13, 2012
Closing: March 11, 2012
Theater: Second Stage Theatre
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, How I Learned to Drive explores the complex relationship between Li’l Bit (Elizabeth Reaser) and her Uncle Peck (Norbert Leo Butz), as a series of driving lessons progresses from innocence to something much darker. Told with surprising wit, Paula Vogel’s acclaimed play is returning to New York City for the first time since its world premiere 15 years ago.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
February 13, 2012
The guy finally utters those three little words that the girl has needed to hear. “I love you,” he says. And her face lights up like candles on a birthday cake.
READ THE REVIEW
February 13, 2012
Norbert Leo Butz, you might say, has switched gears completely, going from a goofy, glitzy musical in which he plays an FBI agent to a harrowing play where he’s definitely on the other side of the law.
READ THE REVIEW
February 13, 2012
More than a decade after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Paula Vogel’s "How I Learned to Drive" remains a dark and quirky romantic comedy involving incest and child molestation – one that is just as unsettling as it is entertaining.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 14, 2012
Norbert Leo Butz has always brought a certain strangeness to his roles, whether a buffoonish con artist in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” or an obsessive FBI agent in “Catch Me If You Can.” But as the pedophile Uncle Peck in “How I Learned To Drive,” he’s all too human, inducing feelings of revulsion and sympathy all at once.
READ THE REVIEW
February 13, 2012
"How I Learned to Drive," which won Paula Vogel the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 (and hasn’t been seen in New York since), is one of those plays you don’t forget in a hurry. Show not only holds up in this Second Stage revival, it still packs an emotional wallop. Playing outside their comfort zones, Elizabeth Reaser ("Twilight," "Grey’s Anatomy") and Norbert Leo Butz (two-time Tony winner for "Catch Me If You Can" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels") sensitively establish the intense, if unhealthy rapport between a sympathetic pedophile and the niece who learns more than she needs to know from him.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 13, 2012
"Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson." Those are indeed prophetic words, as spoken by Elizabeth Reaser at the beginning of Kate Whoriskey’s new production of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive at Second Stage. Playing Li’l Bit, the conflicted young woman whose ready-to-spill secret is as big as her ample chest, Reaser is properly setting you up for an evening that’s more educational than emotionally enlightening, and more intellectually stimulating than psychologically devastating. This is not to suggest, however, that all time spent in a classroom — or even a theater doing double duty as one — is necessarily worthless.
READ THE REVIEWFebruary 13, 2012
Ah, the ineffable alchemy of theater. Who can say why some brews bubble while others go distressingly flat? (As Alan Jay Lerner once said when asked to account for the startling success of "My Fair Lady," "Maybe it was the chandeliers.") Second Stage seems to have the ingredients in place: a top director, a talented cast, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning script. Nevertheless, this new production of Paula Vogel’s 1997 drama "How I Learned to Drive" never slips satisfyingly into gear.
READ THE REVIEW