Not getting Spring Weekend tickets might seem like the end of the world, but look on the bright side: There's always Production Workshop's last major play of the year, "Reckless," which runs Monday through Friday in T.F. Green Hall's downstairs space.
Written by Craig Lucas and directed by Daniel Rogers '08, "Reckless" tells the story of Rachel - an excessively optimistic woman played by Jessica Goldschmidt '10 - who in the midst of her holiday cheer is approached by her husband, Tom, with a daunting confession: He has taken out a contract on her life.
Lucas' script opens with Rachel overflowing with giddiness and excitement because it's Christmas Eve. "I'm having one of my euphoric attacks," she says. "I think I'm going to be terminally happy. You'd better watch out. It's catching."
But Tom, played by Paul Cooper '11, does not catch her cheer. Instead, at this moment, he chooses to tell her she must leave their home immediately before the killer shows up.
Realizing that he is not joking, she decides to run away from her home and family and start a new life, Cooper said. "Reckless" follows Rachel's experiences as a runaway, which include seeing numerous psychiatrists and moving in with a man named Lloyd, who offers her a ride from a gas station, and his paraplegic wife, Pooty - played by Albert Huber '09 and Ivy Martinez '10, respectively, Cooper said, adding that many elements of the play are "sort of surreal."
Despite her attempt to run away and move on, from the moment Rachel receives her husband's confession, everything in her life begins to shatter, Rogers said.
"The world victimizes her," he said. "People keep trying to kill her. It's the main thing that keeps her moving."
The play is also "a reaction to pop psychology," Rogers said. Wearing a lab coat - an uncommon uniform for a therapist used in the play to create a stereotype - each therapist has a prescription for dealing with life's problems and "is trying to create a patent answer," Rogers said, when "the truth of the matter is there is no easy solution."
"Reckless" is about "coming to terms with living in a world that's kind of ultimately senseless" and can often be "cruel in a very funny way," Rogers said. It can be seen as a meditation on the question, "If there's a God, why do bad things happen to good people?" he said.
Rachel's "relentless optimism" creates a tension between her misfortunes and the way in which she copes with them, Goldschmidt said. In her struggle to maintain a perpetual state of happiness, it seems she often fails to face her problems.
"For part of the play, there's a lot of dramatic things that happen to me, and I don't know how to deal so I sort of stop dealing," she said of her character. Rachel approaches her problems "in a pretty silly way at times," she added, which contributes an element of humor to the play.
Both Cooper and Goldschmidt agree that "Reckless" is a darkly comic play.
"You're sympathizing with (the characters), but the darkness is sort of at a ridiculous level that becomes kind of comical," Cooper said.
Since "Reckless" is, as Cooper said, "a show about problems and not being able to get on with life," it seems fitting that it involves several therapy scenes. According to Cooper, a challenge Rogers was confronted with was that many of the therapy scenes have communication without dialogue.
Limited to a small set of gestures, Rogers "worked hard" on making the body language convey the therapist's interactions, which made these scenes "an interesting part of the show," Cooper said.
"Reckless" is broken up into "a lot of little scenes" performed on a simple set - "three distinct discontinuous platforms" - that suits the structure of the play, Cooper said.
"It's a very difficult play to stage because it has 28 scenes in about 60 pages," Rogers said, adding that unlike film, theater has many physical limitations.
"From a technical standpoint, I chose ('Reckless') to improve myself as a director," he said, but then added that his main reason for choosing to direct "Reckless" was that he "pretty much fell in love with the main character."
Rogers said the play has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland" and called it a "nice mix": It not only combines humor with darker undertones but also includes references ranging from Freud to Nat King Cole and uses dream and therapy imagery to explore the way in which humans can learn to live in an imperfect world.
Ticket reservations for "Reckless" will be available on the PW Web site starting Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
The show runs each night from Friday to Monday at 8 p.m., with an additional performance Saturday at 11 p.m.
