Review: Nashville Rep's RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN

An exciting and incisive script, enacted by an ensemble of Nashville's finest actors under the direction of a confident, focused woman who knows how to make compelling theater come to life with style and aplomb...that's what we've come to expect from Nashville Repertory Theatre over the past thirty-some years. And make no mistake about it: the company's 2015-16 season opener delivers all of that and more with Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn, now onstage at TPAC's Andrew Johnson Theatre through September 19.

Directed with her characteristic flair by former Nashville Rep artistic associate Lauren Shouse (who returned to her local theatrical home, after several years in Chicago, to helm the production), Gionfriddo's astoundingly provocative play - which sounds and, perhaps more importantly, feels as if it is being created as you watch this sparkling and cracklingly intense production play out before you - is sure to spark conversation long after you leave the theatre. Written by Gionfriddo with a genuine sense of time and place that seems all too often lacking among the works of her contemporaries, Rapture, Blister, Burn casts new light on the impact of feminism on our society and how the roles of women (and men, too, for that matter) have evolved throughout history and how that plays out in our daily lives.

Feminism, it seems, has gotten a bad rap over the years even while society continues to make giant leaps toward the recognition of the true worth of women in our still-patriarchal society. Frankly, I think the world would be a better place if women were running it - safer, richer, more peaceful and certainly more egalitarian - but one's utopian view of the world is often very different from the reality of the world in which we all live, striving to make the best of the situations in which we find ourselves.

As lofty as those theatrical ideals may sound, what actually sets Gionfriddo apart from her colleagues is her sharp ear and her innate ability to create characters and conversations that ring with authenticity, ensuring that the people, places and events in the fictional world of Rapture, Blister, Burn remain accessible for every member of her audience. Despite the rather ominous - and I fear pretentious and condescending - description of the play that I've already delivered, it must be pointed out that Rapture, Blister, Burn is warmly amusing and altogether appealing. Yet you are sure to question your beliefs, welcoming her challenge to your way of thinking about things, her attempts to quell the status quo ensuring your easy passage into the world she's created.

Taking the scriptbound characters and story to heart and then giving her actors the wings to soar theatrically, Shouse delivers a production that has all the notable attributes we have come to expect from Nashville Rep shows with the added fillip of her own personal vision for the play. As a result, both cast and audience are brought together on a creative journey that both entertains and elucidates, proving that the magic of live theatre remains compellingly and resolutely a part of their lives and their shared experience.

The production's creative structure - so beautifully brought to life via the artistry of Gary C. Hoff's set design, Trish Clark's ideal costume design and Phillip Franck's evocative lighting - gives Shouse's five-person ensemble the enviable ability to breathe life into their characters, with their director's deft hand guiding them almost imperceptibly and with refined grace.

Shouse's understated, even elegant, direction ensures that the actors charged with telling the story are given the freedom to do so, to become their fictional counterparts seamlessly, their onstage interactions the result of the years the characters shared before we meet them.

Shannon Hoppe gives a spectacularly unfettered performance as Catherine, the play's protagonist, a successful writer and pundit, whose past catches up with her in the present in such a way that it makes her question the trajectory of her life and career (truth be told, personal experience has led me on such a spiritual journey of late). Hoppe's performance is intelligently contained, lending credibility to her performance as the pragmatic Catherine.

Ruth Cordell, who plays Catherine's mother Alice, is refreshingly free of any stagey artifice, creating a woman who seems so real and genuine as she provides a bridge of sorts to the past. As a result, the mother-daughter relationship between the two actresses resonates so vividly throughout the play's two acts that it lingers in memory far beyond the end of the play. Cordell and Hoppe's shared moments onstage are wonderfully conceived and beautifully acted.

As Gwen, Catherine's former best friend who's now married to the ex-boyfriend, Cheryl White makes an estimable Nashville Rep debut, walking a fine line with her character to create a memorable performance. Initially, it seems Gwen can be easily dismissed, but thanks to her dramatic arc in the play and to White's talents, she proves more complex and far more intriguing than she does in the play's early going, even as the play ventures into heretofore unexplored territory.

David Ian Lee, as Gwen's husband Don - the ne'er-do-well college dean who prefers getting high and watching internet porn in his study late at night - somehow manages to make his character more engaging and clearly more appealing than he is described in the script. Lee's confident performance makes the rather fantastical competition for him between Gwen and Catherine all the more amusing.

But if there is a character in the play who very nearly steals the entire show away from her co-stars it's Amanda Card's Avery, the reality TV aficionado, former pre-med student and erstwhile babysitter, who provides the audience with carte blanche to enter the world created by the playwright. Card's intensely personal performance is astounding; she commands the stage with focused authority that is underscored by ample charm and sheer likability. That she is given some of Gionfriddo's best lines and delivers each one with elan is merely the icing on the delectable cake of her performance.

• Rapture, Blister, Burn. By Gina Gionfriddo. Directed by Lauren Shouse. Presented by Nashville Repertory Theatre at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Johnson Theatre. Through September 19. For details, go to www.NashvilleRep.org. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).