Presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
Produced in collaboration with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre.
BPT’s Fall Rep Festival
How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos by Maggie Kearnan
Directed by Taylor Stark
Intimacy and violence choreography by Jess Scout Malone
Special effects by Lynn Wilcott
Featuring: Becca A. Lewis, Mark W. Soucy, Robbie Rodriguez
Soft Star by Tina Esper
Directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary
Intimacy & Violence Choreographer: Jess Scout Malone
Featuring: Annika Bolton, Mairéad O’Neill, Jesse Kodama, Kamran Bina
November 7-24, 2024
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (now with a water fountain!)
Kate Snodgrass Stage
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Critique by Kitty Drexel
BOSTON — Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents two plays as part of its Fall Rep Festival: How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos by Maggie Kearnan, a fictional interview with the nonfictional journalist, and Soft Star, a play about secrets between best friends, by Tina Esper.
While they are running in repertory with each other, these plays will not be critiqued by the same standards. The scripts are at different levels of development: Bezos is nearly if not fully completed; Soft Star requires some tweaking and that’s okay; that’s why BPT exists.
This critique discusses both plays in the order I viewed them. Both plays ran through Nov. 24 on different days on the Kate Snodgrass Stage at BPT. Their runs have ended but their legacy will live on.
Benjamin Rose Photography
Nov. 18, 7 PM: How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos
How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos is a thoughtful, “What if?” horror drama. Most of the horror is psychological; some of it is physical. It’s fun if you like that thing. It’s more fun if you consider in the context of the inhumane treatment Amazon warehouse workers endure because of Jeff Bezos’ unchecked greed. Not all fun is for every person. If you don’t enjoy horror, you may not enjoy this one. If you enjoy grassroots justice morality plays, you’ll love this play.
Summary: We are living in the worst timeline. In the timeline of How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos, one with similar political events but different outcomes, it is 2030 and illegal to be a billionaire. The Bernie Bill (so named for beloved curmudgeon, Bernie Sanders) taxes 100% of personal wealth after $999,999.99. Jeff Bezos (Mark W. Soucy) swears he has given up his billions in taxes. But has he? Journalist for the People Cherry Beaumont (Becca A. Lewis) interviews Bezos to find out the truth behind the once-billionaire’s assets while a volatile crowd amasses outside their undisclosed location. Only the play’s fourth-wall-smashing Fact Checker (Robbie Rodriguez) knows for certain if Bezos is telling the truth or lying his trousers off. In song, cathartic screaming, and beer pong we discover as a community why Mr. Bezos went to space with Elon instead of saving the world. This play features blood, some gore, partial nudity and graphic violence. Hooray!
An earlier draft of How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos was performed last summer as part of Moonbox Production’s Boston New Works Festival. Kearnan has made considerable edits to the script for the better. The play is moderately less fantastical in its execution of retribution against unapologetic billionaires: no one has to climb to the theatre’s ceiling; no mass conspiracy behind Bezos is revealed in a surprise twist. But, Kearnan’s updates have made her characters more sympathetic (not Bezos) and the events requiring sleight of hand, props, and fake blood more stage-plausible without losing any of its pro-proletariat warmth and charm.
The cast commits to the bit. Mark W. Soucy plays Bezos as the arrogant asshole that Bezos is. Becca A. Lewis as Cherry Beaumont isn’t suffering her madness; she is trying to enjoy it. Robbie Rodriguez as the Fact Checker is gifted with the play’s heavy lifting by providing the play’s expository explanations as it unravels.
We live in a world that enables billionaires’ apathetic existence at the same time as widespread systemic poverty. How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos spins society’s morbid obsession with exorbitant wealth into a morality play for our time. Billionaires and their shareholders could alleviate poverty by merely paying their taxes without loopholes. But they don’t. This play evens the playing field. Sorta. What’s a little dismemberment between human rights violators? You shouldn’t dish it if you can’t take it, Jeffy.
The cast. Photo by Amelia Cordischi.
Nov. 24, 7 PM: Soft Star
Soft Star’s summary from the BPT website: “Minnesota, the 1980s: Jane (Annika Bolton) and Belle (Mairead O’Neill) are best friends. Their husbands (Jesse Kodama and Kamran Bina) are best friends. Someday, their children will be best friends. And of course, they don’t have any secrets from each other. What could possibly go wrong? A play about what happens when the only plan you’ve ever made starts to unravel.”
For two best friends who are supposed to love each other, Jane and Belle sure don’t like each other that much. Their husbands don’t like them that much, either. (Heteros, y’all know you’re supposed to like and respect your partners, right? Because you are.) Belle is so jealous of Jane’s relative beauty that she marries the guy Jane likes. Jane’s insecure husband Dick is jealous of her appreciation for birds; he’s for the streets. Everyone thinks Jane is ungodly because she didn’t go to church as a kid. So, because we see these characters say they love each other and behave like they don’t, an impartial audience won’t grow to care for them. If we don’t care for the people on stage, we’ll wonder why we weren’t watching Netflix at home.
Playwright Tina Esper’s Soft Star tries too hard to be a complex script with important dialogue that discusses life’s hard truths. It’s trying so hard to contain all of Esper’s hopes that it bungles multiple stories instead of telling one complete story. In addition, for reasons that were never fully explained, there are clairvoyant, talking birds à la the Cinderella folktale. As a result, we’re given mismanaged relationships, incomplete character arcs and an incongruent avian subplot.
The script’s unseen, anthropomorphic bird character is the most sympathetic character in the play (Lucas Chonde in a creepy voiceover that might be sweet if the voice didn’t remix to life like a demon’s spawn in a horror movie). The birds love Jane selflessly and show up when she needs them. Her husband, the aptly named Dick who may or may not have stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, won’t even do that for Jane when she’s feeling ill. Soft Stars’ incorporeal birds may show up suddenly and randomly, but they are the most reliable friends Jane’s got. That’s maddening given her proximity to other humans. Jane and Belle deserve better friendships.
The actors and director O’Leary did their best to make their characters loveable. They are doing the right things in the right order, but they still have to do what the script says. The script tells them to hold grudges long after the fact, to pine for dead characters we learn about in unexplained anecdotes, and to backstab like they’re in a daytime soap opera… While a-seasonally migrating birds drop feathers like they’re in a Hitchcock movie.
Soft Star is two plays in one. The first is a bright, cheerful Hallmark movie about two straight couples growing together despite their mutual intense dislike. The other is a fantasy play about two friends who make wishes on a space anomaly. One wish dooms both women to unhappy marriages and the other allows Jane to speak with birds. As a hopeful audience who enjoys a good story about the eternal bonds of friendship that neither time nor hardship can rend asunder, we want Jane and Belle to repair their relationship. We want them to find joy and for their husbands to recognize that women are people, too. If their wishes on a soft star work out as well, that’s great. Both stories in the play have potential, but not in the same script.
