I think once you’ve had your first quickening experience at live theatre, on some level, you’re always looking for it to happen again. A kind of stirring or exhilaration, that that jolts you to the marrow. You keep going back, and sure, you wouldn’t repeat it, if you didn’t enjoy live performance. You wouldn’t return if you just hated it, but, to reference the phenomenal Pauline Kael, when the lights go down, part of you, anticipates, expects, hopes. To recreate that implacable rush. And from time to time, it sneaks up on you. Your are utterly unprepared for this invasion of authenticity. Even if you don’t act on it afterwards, you’re never the same. Such is the case with Lela & Co.
Lela is so effusive, so exuberant, she’s almost embarrassing. She addresses us directly, as any teenage girl might, chattering, chattering. Describing her entry into the world. How her mother sang. She describes the girlish hilarity of having sisters. Like the school girls from The Mikado. How the one who’s all curvy and zaftig is such a pain. She talks about her girl’s life. Her first menses. Her dad keeps interrupting the story. He’s cheery and robust and all bravado, but he’s an interloper. An idiot. They keep describing an incident with a cake and her birthday. It’s supposed to be funny, but really, it’s how her life isn’t her own. Not even on her special day. The same actor plays her dad, her sister’s husband, the guy he fixes her up with. When Lela goes to visit her sister, he arranges for her to have something like a rendezvous with this guy he knows.
For some reason (without her consent) it’s understood Lela will go and set up house with this stranger. He makes a big deal of the fact that he buys furniture and appliances and clothes as if none of it’s for them both. He makes a ritual of her indebtedness, though not in so many words. So little of what is imposed on Lela is spelled out. When he has sex with her it hurts, but she doesn’t mention it. Gradually her life is reduced to a single act, repeated over and over. It’s during this time she meets the first man who is truly decent to her, and at least tries to to help. By the time their lives intersect, she is all but numb, but their short cycle of encounters has an effect, however subtle.
I’m loathe to use certain terms here, however accurate. Lela & Co is a condemnation of toxic, seemingly benign patriarchy, but intensely visceral, and I don’t want to diminish it, by too much cerebral evaluation. The story is so familiar. You’ve got to watch and listen carefully. Lela’s story overlaps the upper middle-class trap of American wives with the plight of village women whose sole value is measured on the scale of beauty. The more beguiling you are, the more leverage. Such as it is. Imagine subsisting on pastry so sweet it sets your teeth on edge, but it’s laced with vitriol. Playwright Cordelia Lynn explores the tacit, customary contract that puts women in a heterocentrist bind of provision and obligation. By the time Lela’s degradation loses all pretense, we’re shocked we didn’t notice. Lela & Co is a devastating, brilliant narrative, overwhelming and jarring in the best sense. Too rare to miss.
Second Thought Theatre presents Lela & Co, playing April 3rd-27th, 2019. Bryant Hall next to Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd., Dallas, Texas 75219-5598. 866-811-4111. www.secondthoughttheatre.com