"The play is steeped in a gentle lyricism we associate with nostalgic portraits of American youth. The tone, the setting, the characters seem at first so familiar, so, well, normal, that it’s only by degrees that we sense the poison within the pastels. By then we feel both locked into, and complicit with, this portrait of a warping relationship. That’s the art of ,“Drive.” It is also the art plied so effectively by Uncle Peck (Mr. Butz), who knows how to make sex between a grown-up and a minor feel as homey as a Norman Rockwell painting."
By no means was it supposed to be a happy-go-lucky jazz-hands type play. But it wasn't black-box serious either. I guess what I'm REALLY trying to say is that I actually liked Norbert Leo Butz ('s character), and I was feeling guilty for it.
I wasn't going to say anything about it and keep this internal dialogue to myself, until I saw Ben Brantley's review in the Times yesterday. I would have loved to see the menacing David Morse and the vulnerable Mary Louise Parker that Brantley mentions. Those are the types of characters that made sense on the page. But, as always, Brantley found the words to express my entangled ideas in black and white- "It is a performance that captures Ms. Vogel’s remarkable, clear-eyed empathy in portraying the incalculable damage done by damaged people."
There you have it. Go see How I Learned to Drive at Second Stage Theatre and figure it out for yourself.
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