A lot of hard work clearly went into Getting Out, Georgetown theater’s first main production of the year. Premiering only a few weeks after casting, and featuring many newbies in Georgetown theater, the show tries to do many things, all at once: an emotional study of a woman who has been through an awful lot, a crtique of the American criminal justice system, an ensemble piece about the members of a distinctive community, a show with clever sets and running arounds and direction. And in the two hours-plus that it takes to try all these out, the show maybe, just maybe, bites off a little bit more than it can chew.
Getting Out is the story of Arlene, formerly known as Arlie, who has recently been released from a Kentucky prison after serving three years for prostitution and forgery, and then eight years for (accidentally?) killing a cab driver during an escape attempt. It takes place in some version of the present day where a dishwasher makes $75 for a 48-hour week, where Kentuckians say “You can wear anything you want in New York!”, and where Arlene can’t get a high-paying job because she doesn’t know “typing” (the original play was written in 1979).
Arlene, played as her older self by Mary Kate Holman COL ‘11), wants to “bounce back”—get over her past transgressions and make a new life for herself. But she finds that the only people around her now that she’s out,wandering in and out of her grubby apartment, are the same one’s that got her in, and they don’t think she has changed. As the play goes on, we see what got Arlie (the younger version of our protagonist, played by Marina Young (COL ‘13) and looking like shaved-head era Britney on a good day) into such straits in the first place. Abused and neglected in her youth, no one trusted her or cared about her or wanted to help her. Every male she comes into contact with wants to rape her, apparently.
In general, it is unclear what the play wants us to feel or take away, aside from the fact that being born poor in Kentucky sucks. The problems that afflict Arlie have so many causes (pick one depending on your personal political causes): the criminal justice system (although we never see or hear about the courts, just pre-crime, jail, and post-jail), feminism, birth control, minimum wage, the schools, family structure, prison life, prison guards, domestic violence, early-adolescent education and behavorial therapy. For theater as social activism, its hard to tell what action the audience should be motivated to take, and it is hard for the whole thing not to feel dated, and therefore irrelevant to our efforts for change.
If we take Getting Out to be theater as theater, it fares somewhat better. The cast is game, if a trifle overheated, and Holman in particular does a fine job of telegraphing Arlene’s silences and outbursts. Maria Edmunson (COL ‘12) as Arlene’s weary mother, and Andrew Colford (SFS ‘12) as a prison guard and almost a friend, also do admirable jobs. The stage is surrounded by a walkway that extends around the audience with guards walking on it—a nice device that inserts the watchers into the play. The actors also run around on this walkway—and on stage, through multiple exits and entrances, into and out of multiple time periods and conversations. It can get a bit disjointed. And loud. So much going on at once gives the viewer a feeling of head-spinning, in all senses of the term. But the actors are earnest and trying hard, the story is dramatic, and the set is cool. Welcome back, Georgetown theater.
