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Paula Vogel has been teaching playwriting at Brown University since 1985, so if you go to the theater anywhere in America these days, there’s a good chance you’re seeing the work of one of her students. One of her aphorisms (which are legion) is “Time works backwards in the theater.” This is a key element in the nuanced understanding of structure that is The Way of Paula. It isn’t meant literally (Betrayal and Merrily We Roll Along aside); rather, it’s connected to the big subject of What Makes Theater Unique. A scene, or image, or line of dialogue that happens in Act One can transform what you’re looking at in another scene two hours later. Not merely affect; transform.

The structure of Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley is built on this phenomenon. Justin Hammond almost never leaves the stage, but the center of the play is his mother Ashley, who appears only in the first scene. Ashley is a classic bad mother, ex-hippie division: she smokes pot every day, she complains to the 14-year-old Justin about her marriage (not excluding her sexual dissatisfaction), and she’s totally irresponsible, forcing Justin to be the parent in the relationship. We love her immediately.

            ASHLEY

Don’t get married young. I got married young and I fucked up my life.

            JUSTIN

OK…

            ASHLEY

Don’t get married until you’re thirty. Thirty-five.

You don’t know who you are in your twenties.

Try not to get a girl pregnant, but if you do, have an abortion. It’s not the end of the world. You’ll be traumatized for like two days but then you’ll get over it.

            JUSTIN

Did you have an abortion?

            ASHLEY

No, but I could have and…Look, I love you more than anything. You’re the only good thing in my life. But I was twenty-one and I didn’t know myself and I didn’t know your dad at all; we’d been dating like a couple of months—a little longer…

            JUSTIN

So I’m an accident?

            ASHLEY

Yeah. Should I not have told you that?

            JUSTIN

I’m not sure.

            ASHLEY

Am I screwing you up by telling you this?

            JUSTIN

I don’t know yet.

            ASHLEY

I was just way too young. I was twenty-one which I know sounds really old to you, but oh my God… Sometimes I look at you and I think you should be demented. I can’t believe you’re not totally demented.

            JUSTIN

Why—because you got stoned when you were pregnant?

 

            ASHLEY

No. I mean, I did once or twice, but I mean…We bought a house and your dad went to work and there I was. With you. I’m twenty-one and I’m a housewife and it was OK when you were a baby and I just sorta strapped you on and took you places but when you started to walk JESUS CHRIST. My whole life was chasing after you making sure you didn’t kill yourself and I got so depressed. Really… psycho depressed.

            I used to stick you in your crib and go smoke and then you’d cry and I’d go back in cuz I felt guilty and I’d just sit in front of your crib. I’d sit on the floor and just hang onto the bars on the crib like I was in jail and I would cry. And then you’d cry because I was crying and I’d cry more because what kind of horrible mother makes her baby cry, you know?

            JUSTIN

Yeah…I don’t know if you should be telling me this.

The remainder of the play takes place three years later. Ashley has been raped and murdered. Justin’s father has written a bestselling book about the tragedy.

Justin has become a cruel, caustic asshole. Few writers could pull off the trick of having such an unlikable protagonist— Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and David Hare’s Plenty come to mind—but here’s where Gina applies the lesson of her teacher, because we, like Justin, have seen the real Ashley, and we too want to stop the mythologizing of the fake Ashley the world has “come to know”—first from the book, then the TV show, then the endowed center for battered women.

Justin’s plan to put a halt to the myth is sick, ugly, and brilliantly funny. He acquires two co-conspirators: a girlfriend whose relationship with him is sick, ugly, and honest; and a sexaholic/voyeur whose philosophy is sick, ugly, and wise. In Gina’s plays, as in all great plays, no one is wrong; everyone is right.

We don’t know where to stand. It’s uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Gina is also one of the funniest writers in America. Her characters are unmistakably Americans: they are completely self-centered, frequently heartless, and act from a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement.

In U.S. Drag, 25-year-old Allison and Angela and have recently arrived in New York City. Here’s what they say when asked what they do for work.

            ANGELA

Allison and I went to college together. We have degrees with distinction. We worked very hard. We’re not going to make copies for minimum wage in the windowless basement of Condé Nast while women with inferior minds and shoddy grammar make six figures upstairs.

            ALLISON

We write better than they do. We dress better than they do. Which should count for something at a fucking fashion magazine. But if you tell them that—

            ANGELA

Our sense of self worth is predicated on being treated fairly and respectfully. We’re not going to do mind numbing work for poverty wages when we’re capable of more.

ALLISON

We also don’t want to be poor.

You may have already heard this conversation in a bar in Greenpoint, but have you ever heard it onstage?

The pursuit of fame is everywhere in Gina’s urban landscapes. “For a lot of people,” she told me, “there is this idea that becoming famous is the cure for loneliness. That’s why we’re so fixated on Brad and Jen: You shouldn’t have any problems if you’re that good-looking and that rich.” What makes her work so powerful and important is her obsession with tabloid crime stories and the relentlessness of the media machine that feeds on them. Her plays locate the dizzy psyche of America in these stories, where the culture of fear meets the culture of celebrity.

In her beautiful, nightmarish play Guinevere, Hollywood starlet Glenda Gurwich kills a little girl while driving drunk. Her lawyer gets her off without jail time, but cannot save her from the horror of community service. (Her lawyer, trying to soften the blow: “They’re going to want significant reparations and, let me be very honest with you, when you’re dealing with a child…when the descendent is under, say, twelve, there is absolutely no wiggle room there, you have to give it to them.”)

Glenda is forced to labor at a day care center. (Glenda: “I have a debt to pay and I accept that but this is too much. This is not fair. No one made Ted Bundy play with dying children.”) Even worse, she is unable to land a role in a film.

(Her agent: “We just have to give it a little more time. Right now, what they’re doing is they’re OJ-ing you. Right now, at this moment, the cool PC thing to do is to not give Glenda Gurwich work. But believe me that will pass. Memory in Hollywood has a very short half-life. The next big celebrity fuck-up will make your thing old news and that’s what we’re waiting for.”)

Escape from day care comes as a strange acting assignment, filling in for an actress who was killed in an accident on the set near the completion of the “huge, money-sucking epic” Guinevere, shooting in the small European country of Verslovenberg. Everything on the film set is a little odd, beginning with the companion assigned to Glenda by the completion bond company: a doppelganger for the girl she ran over.

            EMILY

My name is Emily. I am twelve years old and I’m from Sherman Oaks, California. I am a private sector drug enforcement supervisor with a specialty in the entertainment industry. I began my career at the age of five and have worked on eight films. My father is an Executive in Charge of Production for a major film studio. My mom is dead. She drank and drugged herself to death and I watched her do it. I know addicts inside and out. I know their tricks, I sense their lies. Nothing escapes me. If you hide your stash, I will find it. Your mouthwash and cough syrup cocktail won’t fool me because I’ve seen it all before. I am your second shadow and your substitute conscience. I will get you to the set on time and I will save you from yourself. I am a victim of your excess. I am a substance abuse survivor. I am your worst nightmare and your only hope.

            (extends her hand to GLENDA)

We have half an hour to do baggage and body check, then you come with me to my tutor at three.

I won’t reveal more about Glenda’s journey, except to say that it will send the audience out arguing over whether the heroine deserves her ultimate fate—as one does after a play by Euripides. Except for one thing: Gina has better jokes.

After Ashley by Gina Gionfriddo
directed by Terry Kinney

with Kieran Culkin and Anna Paquin

The Vineyard Theatre

February 10–March 20

for tickets: theatermania.com

IN DIALOGUE is a column written by playwrights about playwrights, with a focus on showcasing new texts. If you are a playwright, and would like to write a column, please contact Emily DeVoti at: editorial [AT] brooklynrail.org.