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NY Theater: “Miss Witherspoon” a zany modern political parable

Christopher Durang’s comic play tells how to save the world

By Lucy Komisar

In Christopher Durang’s broadly comic political parable, a depressive, suicidal woman is chosen by the gods to return to earth to straighten out a society that uses sophisticated weapons to fight essentially tribal wars and has done of pretty good job of nearly destroying the planet.

Veronica Witherspoon (Kristine Nielsen) seems hardly the candidate for the job. She’s the kind that, when she touches a flower, all the petals fall off. And she takes society’s failures to heart. She commits suicide out of horror that Skylab, the U.S. space station, was abandoned in spite of the scientific prediction that its thousands of tons of heavy metal would eventually plummet. In fact, a huge feathery bird runs out onto the stage yelling, “The sky is falling,” and metal debris smashes to the ground.

Nielsen, with a perennially goofy expression, is perfect as part actress, part standup comedian, part sit-com shtick artist. Director Emily Mann effectively presents absurdity as if it was logical, a style that is popular in Washington these days. There are not many rough edges.

Some people like everything they’ve ever seen by Christopher Durang. Count me in that category. This kooky satire is an easy way to take Durang’s modern political preaching. And “preaching,” in the context, is quite à propos, with his pointed commentary on religion. Durang’s revisionism doesn’t hold too much for the violence and hypocrisy of traditional Christian mythology, including the Biblical killing of animals and the threat to murder Isaac. “What about forgiveness?” Or about the assertion that it’s harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven: “Is there an income cutoff?”

Mercifully dead, surrounded by blue sky and clouds, Veronica sits in a fiberglass chair in the “Bardo,” Durang’s version of purgatory, or at least the anteroom to heaven. She listens in horror to Maryamma (the bell-toned Mahira Kakkar), an Indian in a glittery gold and pink sari, tell her it’s really not over, that the song “Where or when” is about reincarnation. She can’t stay dead.

In fact, the only ones who escape reincarnation are the Jews, because they don’t believe in an afterlife. Jewish heaven is like prolonged general anesthesia. It is populated by a handful of other after-life doubters, prominently Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. That leads into a bit of philosophy about nothingness and the recollection of a line uttered by Jean Paul Belmondo in “Breathless.”

By now, you should get the idea. One thing leads to another, and eventually the plot gets back to where it started. Sometimes the bits seem silly and the situations overly drawn out, but the political punch lines are worth the wait. The point here, wedged into a series of bizarre escapades, is that no matter how horrible life may seem, people have a responsibility to take charge of it, overcome, and contribute to the betterment, no, to the salvation of society.

But “horrible” can get pretty horrible. Veronica is reincarnated as a two-week old baby, with the brain of a grown-up, of course. She says “googoo,” and mama (Colleen Werthmann) replies, “That’s a search engine.” There’s a jealous dog in the family. And Veronica is still suicidal.

She is reincarnated as the abused child of two crude, drug-addicted, right-wing Christians (Werthmann and Jeremy Shamos). When, tired of pummeling her, they transfer her from home schooling to public school, she meets the neighborhood pill pusher. She is still suicidal.

But meanwhile, earth is suffering the turbulence of past and future violence and wars between Pakistan and India, between North and South Korea, of biological weapons set off in New York and London, of Americans bombing Syria and Iran.

Veronica gets a lot of talking to about that from the folks “up there.” Jesus Christ –portrayed as a black woman (Lynda Gravatt), with big hat and long strings of pearls – notes that she has already been to earth, and she isn’t going back. Gravatt is a delight as the tough, slightly tacky Jesus. The local wise man (Shamos) is offhandedly referred to as Gendolf from “Lord of the Rings.”

The world is a mess, and though the wise folks in heaven may provide some inspiration, says Durang, and even some surreptitious help, but it’s up to the folks on earth to fix things. It’s a sermon leavened with levity.

“Miss Winterspoon.” Written by Christopher Durang. Directed by Emily Mann. Starring Kristine Nielsen, Lynda Gravatt, Mahira Kakkar, Jeremy Shamos, Colleen Werthmann.

Playwrights Horizons. 416 West 42nd St. Tue-Sat 8pm; Sat & Sun 2:30pm; Sun 7:30pm.  Running Time: 1:30. Through Jan. 1, 2006. $60. 212-279-4200. http://www.playwrightshorizons.org/

by Joan Marcus

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