Fucking A

It's a vulgar but common expression taken to mean "You bet!" or "Right on!", but in the context of this work, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has, as all good wordsmiths do, rescued the term from cliché and given it a multiplicity of meanings.

Using Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, as a embarkation point, Parks' drama explores the ramifications of sex, unwanted children, abortion, and violence in a police state where abortion is stigmatized, not unlike the world envisioned by Bush and his self-righteous, but horribly conflicted and hypocritical, constituency.

As Brechtian drama, Fucking A asks us to consider the ideas behind the behavior we witness on stage; the play's gestalt is equal parts intellectual puzzle and dramatic arc. As a result, the characters take on a fatalistic quality, much like classical tragedy, each "mask" representing some cosmic or societal force.

Park's Hester is an abortionist in a place where such an occupation is legal, but subject to ridicule and abuse. Her scarlet letter is not sewn upon her garment, but tattooed upon her chest, and by law must be visible at all times. Yet even those who publicly rail against her service use it in private when it suits them.

Lisa Mumpton as Hester Smith

Lisa Mumpton plays Hester as a genuinely conflicted soul, someone who understands the necessity of her dispiriting work, taking life to save life. Within the darkness of her days, at the mercy of those who come to her door, she scrounges for what little meaning she can find, lighting a candle after each operation, considerate of her friend the butcher's advances, and hopeful that her son will return to her.

Her best friend, Canary Mary, is caught in a quandary of a different sort, between prostitution and marriage, kept by the mayor, hoping to supplant his wife. Yet GerRee Hinshaw embodies Parks' most upbeat character, awash in sensuality and fantasy, she ministers to Hester and indulges the mayor, spreading her gospel of pleasure.

As the mayor, Mathew Korda plays Canary Mary and his wife, First Lady, as the gullible constituency-consumers they are, each wanting to believe that if only a) he were divorced, or if only b) I could get pregnant, everything would be fine.

Dan Torbenson's butcher plays this same game, offering Hester the best cuts of meat as tokens of his affection, thus begging life-taking and life-giving comparisons between his line of work and hers. In this setting, romantic chemistry happens not with a bang, but with a whimper, a post-industrial minimalism so withdrawn it makes oriental courting rituals look like moose rutting.

Like an Italian diva in a Chinese opera, Petra Ulrych's First Lady storms through this tea party, begging for fertility rites, then, matching the Mayor's infidelity, aghast when she is rewarded. Beside herself, she is easily manipulated, retching in the aftermath of the bloody outcome.

Within this macabre dance of death and sex, enters Josh Robinson's Monster, a Ted Bundy-esque invention equally at home seducing or murdering. Robinson's aggressive innocence and even-tempered menacing is mesmerizing, setting up victims for his cobra-like strikes.

This allegoric menagerie is rounded out by a quirky ensemble ranging from a chorus of hunters, reminiscent of Canadian comedy shtick (SCTV), to a coven of crones awaiting the knife.

Despite it's sophisticated imagery and argument, Fucking A comes off as much agitprop as drama. It's entertaining and thought-provoking, yet the limitations of Hester's life and thoughts mitigate against any catharsis, leaving us with an anti-hero and a tragedy with no way out. Yes, we can see that her sacrifices may be acts of mercy, and her revenge as much against herself as her enemies, but then for whom and for what world does she light a candle—the living or the dead—and with what vain hope?

The Lida Project's production of Fucking A runs through February 21. 303-282-0466.

Bob Bows