Rapture, Blister, Burn
Opening Night: June 12, 2012
Closing: June 24, 2012
Theater: Playwrights Horizons
After grad school, Catherine and Gwen chose polar opposite paths. Catherine built a career as a rockstar academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, unfulfilled in polar opposite ways, each woman covets the other’s life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs — the prize being Gwen’s husband. With searing insight and trademark wit, this comedy is an unflinching look at gender politics in the wake of 20th century feminist ideals.
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June 13, 2012
A good, old-fashioned consciousness-raising session flares into life in the first act of “Rapture, Blister, Burn,” the intensely smart, immensely funny new play by Gina Gionfriddo that opened Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons. Over late afternoon martinis, four women representing three generations dive into a freewheeling conversation about how women’s lives have and have not changed since the 1970s. The image of women rapping away about gender roles may hark back to that seemingly distant era, but the rap itself is rich in new perspectives. Consider this unlikely phenomenon: The ideas of Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist scold of the “me” decade, are given about as much airtime as those of Betty Freidan, one of the movement’s heroines.
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June 13, 2012
Because Gina Gionfriddo fires off witty line after outright belly-laugh after witty line throughout Rapture, Blister, Burn, now at Playwrights Horizons — and because she’s aided in her task by a fine cast under the direction of Peter DuBois — her examination of contemporary feminist attitudes becomes a more entertaining piece of work than her awkward issue-oriented plotting should allow.
READ THE REVIEWJune 13, 2012
Have you ever found yourself wondering just how beautiful a machine can be? If so, a sterling example is currently on view at Playwrights Horizons, in the form of Gina Gionfriddo’s new play Rapture, Blister, Burn. Both the playwright and director (Peter DuBois) of Becky Shaw, which had its New York premiere at Second Stage in 2009, have reunited for this examination of what women want and how the changing course of feminism over the decades has told them they’re supposed to get it. At specific issue is whether Don (Lee Tergesen), the go-nowhere dean at a small college, is better off with his traditionalist wife Gwen (Kellie Overbey) or with Catherine (Amy Brenneman) the fiery, rich, and now-successful ex he once passed over, with Catherine’s mother Alice (Beth Dixon) and 21-year-old Avery (Virginia Kull) to offer perspectives from very different points along the generational divide.
READ THE REVIEWJune 12, 2012
Gina Gionfriddo’s new play “Rapture, Blister, Burn” is a smart, funny and lightning-paced look at feminism — past and present. Can women have it all? The show’s title alludes to a lyric from a Courteney Love song that speaks of, among other things, “emptiness” and “awful truths.” That’s your first clue.
READ THE REVIEWJune 12, 2012
There’s a lot of talk about feminism, the women’s movement, and generational gender issues in Rapture, Blister, Burn, Gina Gionfriddo’s fascinating new drama running at Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons through June 24. But even if you don’t know Betty Friedan from Betty Crocker, you won’t miss a minute of the emotionally charged debates between Cathy (Private Practice’s Amy Brenneman), Gwen (Kellie Overbey), and Avery (Boardwalk Empire’s Virginia Kull) — which get even better with the addition of Cathy’s mom, Alice (Beth Dixon), and a few straight-up martinis. (Trust me: I’d never heard of famous ERA opponent Phyllis Schlafly — let the mocking begin — and if you took a swig each time her name is dropped you’d be hammered halfway through scene two.)
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