Bachelorette: Partying Gone Awry

Last night I attempted to see Bachelorette at the 2nd Stage Theater. Due to lack of internet and thus, lack of planning, I arrived 30 minutes late to this 90 minute production. Sweaty and embarrassed (I had gotten the time and location wrong), the production did a great job of taking my mind off of my travels, and throwing me right into the story. The set up was pretty clear. Becky is getting married, and she has invited her maid of honor, Regan (Tracee Chimo) to use her hotel room on the eve of the wedding. Unfortunately for Becky, Regan has decided to invite two of Becky's ex-friends, Katie and Gena. While Becky's still out doing night-before activities, the three remaining girls take the opportunity to party in the hotel room. Soon, the combination of alcohol, pot, and other drugs drive the girls to destroy the room, and to call each other out for previous misconduct.

I entered the theater right when Regan, Katie, and Gena decide to play with Becky's dress, tearing it as a result. Then a blame war resumes in which each tries to prove how the other is a worse person, and therefore more responsible for destroying Becky's room. Regan brings up Gena's abortion while a hurt Gena can only dejectedly reply, "Why did you say that?"

The answer to this question is slowly revealed over the next hour as Regan takes a center role. After the next scene change, we see Regan and Katie (Gena had gone to find a tailor for the dress) re-entering Becky's hotel room, each with a guy in tow. Regan's conversations with her guy Jeff (Eddie Kay Thomas) raises questions about Regan, such as why she is hooking up with other guys when she has a boyfriend. Why does she think her job, reading to child cancer patients, is "boring?" Meanwhile, Katie (Celia Keenan-Bolger) discusses her former prom queen status with her guy Joe (Fran Kranz). She reveals plenty of secrets while in her drunken stupor, inviting audiences to reflect on their own moments of inebriation.

Though there are many plays about late night conversations leading to "meaning," or revelation, there aren't many that do this convincingly. The dialogue in Bachelorette is natural, even in the most unsurprising moment, when one character reveals that one of their friends died of alcohol poisoning--a death that they've always felt some responsibility for. The naturalness of this story can be attributed both to the superb acting and the diction. The characters are supposed to be in their late twenties, and they believably speak like today's twentysomethings. The playwright, Leslye Headland, avoids the forced "dudes," and instead gives her characters an appropriate blend of wisdom and forced casualness. Regan interrupts her conversations to check her phone. "Ugh...I can't believe these guys keep texting me," she remarks while obviously delighted by the attention.

While the drugs and revelations are not particularly disturbing, the final confrontation between Regan and Becky is. This ten minute climax towards the end is worth the entire ninety minutes of the production. As Becky tries to understand the damage done to her hotel room, you can see Regan scheming to turn this into Becky's fault. The two then torture each other in a battle of saying the most hurtful things possible. In the end, you get to decide who wins.