During the powerful last scene of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, Rhea Seehorn astounds as the Teenage Greek Chorus playing the heroine as a child. Although in her twenties, she looks preadolescent as she stares out wide-eyed at the audience, wearing a smocked dress and bobby socks. A few feet away, her adult alter ego, Li'l Bit (Deidre Lovejoy), reenacts her molestation at the age of eleven by Uncle Peck (Kurt Rhoads) during her first "driving lesson," which marked the last day she remembers inhabiting her body. The horror distorting the sweet innocence of Seehorn's youthful face, as, despite her protests, her uncle lifts (Lovejoy's) blouse to fondle her breasts while her hands are trapped on the wheel at "9 and 3 o'clock," is harrowing.
The evocativeness of this image made me long to attend a performance in which Seehorn, Lovejoy's understudy, played the lead. Not because Lovejoy, an accomplished actress, who played Li'l Bit in the original off-Broadway production at the Vineyard at the Century Theater, is lacking, but because Seehorn's youth would increase the intensity. (Melissa Leo, formerly a hard-boiled detective on NBC's "Homicide," did a credible job as Li'l Bit last season at Center Stage. The role was originated by Mary Louise Parker in the New York production.) Despite the evil of his ways, the obsessed Uncle Peck is sympathetic as the World War II veteran and neighborhood Mr. Fixit, (think Lewis Carroll pursuing "Alice in Wonderland" down a rabbit hole), who is destroyed by his passion for his niece.
As much as Li'l Bit, the viewer wishes an answer to the question she failed to ask prior to his suicide by alcoholism, after she rejected his marriage proposal at 18: How old were you when it happened to you...were you eleven, too? Vogel developed the 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama at Perseverance Theater while Smith was Artistic Director, and this is Smith's fourth direction of the script. Currently artistic director at Arena Stage, Smith has picked a strong Greek chorus of local actors, featuring Seehorn and Helen Hayes Award winning Sarah Marshall, perfect in hot pink (the color provided by costume designer Lydia Tanji for both her roles as Uncle Peck's prim, wronged wife, Li'l Bit's Aunt Mary, and her slatternly, "cracker" mother).
Timmy Ray James is a gawky would-be teen suitor, infatuated with the breasts that make Li'l Bit an anomaly in her Beltsville, Maryland, high school. (With her long blond hair in a bun, the versatile Seehorn easily becomes Li'l Bit's grandmother, chased by her randy husband (James again).) As Vogel is quoted in the program notes, "It takes a whole village to molest a child." Although Li'l Bit's mother initially opposes the driving lessons -- she disapproves of how Uncle Peck looks at her daughter -- she is easily won over. And in a family where folks earn nicknames based on their genitalia, (such as "Li'l Bit," as the voyeuristic family described what lay between the infant's pudgy legs), she had no hope. Indeed, the family's obtuseness to Li'l Bits' needs drives her -- so to speak -- into the arms of her uncle as the one person who appreciated her. Paradoxically, his love enables her eventual break to independence at his expense.
The simple set by Kate Edmunds (who designed the show at Berkeley Repertory Theater) features a blue and red scrim, lit from behind by James F. Ingalls to reveal traffic signals and stop signs; a yellow broken line on the stage completes the imagery. When Li'l Bit innocently descends to Uncle Peck's darkroom to pose for the first of a series of soft-core photos he intends to market to "Playboy," the minimal set is more effective than the pictures of kiddie porn adorning the walls at Center Stage. Three wooden chairs serve as well for the car as a replica of the 1956 Chevy, as Smith's careful direction unpeels the layers of the play to its dark heart.
