by James Wilkinson
Lorena: a Tabloid Epic – Written by Eliana Pipes. Directed by Erica Terpening-Romeo. Scenic Design: Meg McGuigan. Lighting Design: Amanda Fallon. Sound Design: Sean A. Doyle. Costume Design: Emma George. Properties Design: Steven Doucette. Presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at 949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215 through October 24, 2021
Because I’m the kind of person that likes theatre to be a social occasion, I brought a friend with me to see Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s Lorena: a Tabloid Epic. When the final applause died down and the house lights came on, the two of us left our seats with a very heavy silence between us. We both appeared on the verge of saying something though neither of us seemed confident about what that something would be. So there it hung in the air between us and there it stayed until about two blocks away from the building when I decided to take the plunge and ask her the delicate question, “So what did you think of the show?”
I knew that I hadn’t really cared for the play, (and for the record, neither did she), but the challenge of pinpointing why I responded to the work the way I did quickly becomes a gordian knot. I’ve spent just about every moment since the play ended trying to interrogate my response only to find that everything is so bound up together that there’s nowhere to plant your feet. The play by Eliana Pipes takes as inspiration the 1993 real-life case of Lorena Bobbitt, a woman who found herself shoved to the forefront of public consciousness when she cut off her sleeping husband’s, (John Bobbitt), penis with a kitchen knife. At her subsequent trial she detailed years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband, culminating in a rape on the night of the incident. She was ultimately acquitted on the grounds of temporary insanity. Those are the broad strokes of the story but when you dig into the details it only gets uglier. The media landscape of the early 90s developed an obsession with the case, reducing the story to a late-night punchline and (perhaps most horrifyingly), seemed to focus more on the act of the cutting rather than on the egregious events that led up to it.
But Pipes doesn’t present the story as a docudrama or even as a conventional narrative. It’s a more a vortex of events, fact, figures and personalities surrounding the case all tied up in a big meta-textual bow. Here, a Greek chorus forms around a fictional Lorena, (Gabriela Medina-Toledo, who has a lovely gentle touch in the role). This collection of the masses, (standing in for you, me and everyone we know), acts under the eyes of the Playwright, (Valyn Lyric Turner), who pops up, trying to (in her mind), protect Lorena and ensure that the story is viewed the way she wants it to be. I think I see what Pipes was after with the piece. She’s trying to dig into why our culture has such a morbid fascination with stories like Lorena’s and what we miss when we focus on one element of the story at the expense of others. Coming at a time that sees a glut of true-crime media and reconsiderations of how past press has portrayed similar “tarnished” women, there’s a lot to unpack here. But Pipes and director Erica Terpening-Romeo don’t so much open it up as they instead stuff everything into the box and throw it at your head. The media circus metaphor is turned literal with Terpening-Romeo pitching her production at warp speed. We ricochet around the theater as the play shifts from aspect to aspect of the original case and try to keep up with tones that range from the gleefully ridiculous to the devastatingly solemn.
It’s not a bad idea to treat the original case as an outrageous farce. Certain events around the case, (like the porno John Bobbit performed in after his penis was reattached), seem too outlandish to have actually happened. (They did). And God only knows how it must have felt for the real-life Lorena. But Pipes doesn’t just want us to consider the case, she wants us to consider our response to the case, why we align ourselves in the story the way we do. That’s where the jazzed-up atmosphere runs us into trouble because I’d argue that the audience is never allowed the time and space to have a proper response to investigate. How could we when every time a point of view is expressed on stage or a possible grey area is alluded, it’s almost immediately retorted or pointed out as problematic? There’s nowhere for us to get that footing and then reconsider. Instead, we’re prodded to constantly jump ahead to each new element.
There’s a chance that the intent was to give the audience as much as possible so that they could begin sorting out their own opinions on the drive home. But if that’s the case, it flattens out our experience while in the theater. There are some pretty funny bits here. Ivan C. Walks gets a comic monologue as John’s severed penis which he nails. But if you’re trying to do the work of thinking beyond what’s immediately in front of you, you don’t fully enjoy it. You can’t relax into the play’s humor because you’re constantly trying to make the contradictory pieces fit into a larger point. I’m not going to make the mistake of assuming the character, Playwright, is supposed to be a one-to-one representation of Pipes’ perspective. In the part, Turner brings some shades to the character that make it clear we’re not always supposed to agree with her. But those shadings also make it difficult to understand where the play is coming from. Rather than open us up to ambiguities, it shuts us down because we don’t trust ourselves.
I think that in the play’s ending, we do finally arrive at that sense of perspective. But there lies the little contradiction at the heart of Lorena: a Tabloid Epic. The play wants rail against the fact its subject was reduced down to a symbol for anyone who had use of it. But in the process of doing so, Lorena Bobbitt is in fact, reduced down to a symbol. We don’t come away from the play with an understanding of the person, only how her story reflects back on us. There might be something we can learn from that. But isn’t something else getting lost in the translation? For tickets and more information, visit their website: www.bostonplaywrights.org
Potential patrons should note that proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test will be required for entry. Masks will be required throughout the performance. For more information on the policy, please visit the BPT website.
