Dorea Schmidt, Natascia Diaz, and Kate Rigg (Scott Suchman)
By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein
It’s much funnier than it is angry.
Premiering at Woolly Mammoth, Jen Silverman’s absurdist comedy Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops features a series of female stereotypes all named Betty Boop, after the sexualized cartoon character that first gained popularity in the 1930s.
These women include a blonde, Amherst-educated housewife who spends her days fretting about the news; a buttoned-up, lonely acquaintance who reads Ladies’ Home Journal in bed; an ambitious Latina working at Sephora; a tattooed truck enthusiast enamored with the Latina; and finally, an even more tattooed ex-con who owns a boxing gym.
The Bettys appear in order of sexual preference, from straight but curious (Bettys 1 and 2, played by Beth Hylton and Dorea Schmidt) to bi (Betty 3, Natascia Diaz) to queer (Betty 4, Kate Rigg) to gender queer (Betty 5, Felicia Curry). Or something like that… As the show goes on, these labels become less important, and soon Betty 5’s long explanation for her gender identity and pronoun preference is taken about as seriously as Betty 3’s long string of qualifiers for her latte order.
The play’s primary male roles—both absent husbands—are punching bags more than characters, and are more or less interchangeable. But it’s not only men that leave holes in these women’s lives. Unfulfilled by her job behind the makeup counter, Betty 3 attends a production of a play that she thinks is called Summer’s Midnight Dream and decides to pursue a new career in the “theat-tah.”
This decision conveniently brings all five women together for rehearsals of their own play-within-a-play. If their show seems nonsensical when compared to Shakespeare’s, Betty 4 makes a salient point: “A lot of things that seem like art are actually about pussy.”
Director Mike Donahue, who has worked with Silverman before, embraces the meta moments of Collective Rage with the right balance of silliness and sentimentality. One scene in which wannabe actresses engage in a classic theater-major game—looking at each other and saying things they notice—pulls at the heart strings despite its self-aware cheesiness.
For women who spend their lives in costume, it takes a little acting to become themselves, even if they’re playing characters that sound a little ridiculous, such as Midsummer‘s “moon shine” and “wall” and “the prologue.” Schmidt’s monologue riffing on her role as “the lion” stands out as a hilarious and fiercely feminist crescendo.
Save for the hand mirror and the toolkits that Bettys 4 and 5 use to work on their trucks, there are very few props in Collective Rage. Everything is kept visually simple until, towards the end of the play’s 1:45 run time, Betty 2 decides to throw a party. On cue, a single balloon drifts down from the rafters—the first quiet snowflake before a blizzard of color, music, ego, and sex.
Collective Rage is about finding yourself, making weird friends, and falling in love with someone unexpected; and about trading in high heels for boxing gloves and self-hatred for a guitar.
In other words, it’s about pussy.
Collective Rage is playing at Woolly Mammoth through October 9. Tickets are available here.
