The thrilling Broadway premiere of Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece How I Learned to Drive reunites the original stars with their award-winning director for a new production. Tony Award® winner Mary-Louise Parker (The Sound Inside, Proof) and Tony nominee David Morse (The Iceman Cometh) are joined by Tony Award® nominee and original cast member Johanna Day, Alyssa May Gold, and Chris Myers in this remarkably timely and moving memory play about a woman coming to terms with a charismatic uncle who impacts her past, present and future life. Directing is Mark Brokaw (Heisenberg).
I realize that doesn't make it sound like a fun 100 minutes in the theater. And Brokaw's production does show a few cracks: The glowing screens (designed by Rachel Hauck) are unhandsome; David Van Tieghem's sound design does not always amplify the actors sufficiently. But the chance to see these performers doing such incandescent work should shoulder all such concerns aside. See it for Parker, see it for Morse. Drive is also - and I'm sorry this is such an uncool way to put it - the truth. We have been surrounded in recent months by variously hysterical and inaccurate claims from politicians and blowhards about what counts as child endangerment. Vogel, with all her postmodern tricks, is offering a straight-forward account of how these things happen. A girl is in peril, and although the people around her all sense it, they actively push her further into harm.
In the case of Parker, a riveting, restless explorer of the human psyche who can bend time, it seems, it truly does. This is, after all, a memory play and memories abide and perhaps even clarify. That said, and with all due respect to a remarkable actor, Morse feels rather less sexually menacing. That might well be a smokescreen or even a dangerous learned stereotype, given the way abuse issues often play out in reality. But if you recall the energy of his manipulations the last time, the way he clung on Li'l Bit's youth like an insect sucking blood, you will feel the difference this time around.
1997 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2012 | Off-Broadway |
Second Stage Theatre Production Off-Broadway |
2022 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway Premiere Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | How I Learned to Drive |
2022 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Awards | David Morse |
2022 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | How I Learned To Drive |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | How I Learned to Drive |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Special Achievement Awards | Johanna Day |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | David Morse |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Mary-Louise Parker |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | How I Learned to Drive |
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