Vadoo voodoo

Perishable's Girl Gone gets under your skin

by Bill Rodriguez

GIRLGONE. By Mac Wellman. Directed by Vanessa Gilbert. Songs by Cynthia Hopkins, choreography by Heather Ahern, additional music by Alec K. Redfearn. With Constace Crawford, John Holdridge, Casey Seymour Krim, Laura Ames, Monica-Lisa Mills, Sina Aurelia Sao, Elizabeth Anne Keiser, Melissa D'Amico, David Tessier. At Perishable Theatre through March 26.

Daddies, watch your daughters. Mac Wellman is convinced that danger lurks out there for the vulnerable and impressionable, and from far more disturbing sources than creeps in trench coats. In Girl Gone, the human mind is a Pandora's box that the fervid adolescent imagination (and the playwright) holds a key to. And what a whirlwind is busting to get set loose in this Perishable Theatre production.

We're at a girls' school, St. Lulu's, located more in a state of mind than a place. We are immediately informed by a visiting father that "evil is a bond stronger than blood," an apt concern at the moment. For a girl named Hope is missing, and suspicion falls on an unholy trio known to their friends as "the Evil Sisters." With incantatory song and rhythmic ritual gesture, Lisa (Monica-Lisa Mills), Lissa (Laura Ames) and Elyssa (Sina Aurelia Sao) spellbind like some punk-trance band on a Shakespearean heath. Music and movement combine wonderfully, merging a visceral drumbeat with the frantic heartbeat of this fevered play.

Most of these bizarre and entrancing happenings, not to mention Wellman's hypnotic, Rorschach-poetic language, correspond to recognizable social relationships and states of mind -- especially under Vanessa Gilbert's lucid direction. Girl Gone tackles cliques, exclusion, and peer pressure; academic imperiousness vs. youthful solipsism. The outlines of adolescent angst are clear whether what gets colored in is instantly recognizable, scribbled, or just wildly decorative. And since we all remain vehicles for our Inner Child, this Expressionistic foray into the collective American teenage consciousness is memorable indeed.

In this psychologically parallel universe, the Evil Sisters have created, or discovered, an alternate reality -- a box within a box, if you will. The realm of Vadoo is a haven they can retreat to, away from the pressures of life. In a reverse of the myth, in which only hope was left when Pandora let loose the misfortunes of the world, the classmate Hope is taken from the world and doesn't want to leave Vadoo.

The alternate realm is associated with living a life while not being part of one's age. On the one hand, Vadoo is connected to the elevated but isolated mental space that intellectual women occupied in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, there is the possibility that Hope, and eventually others, were victims of spontaneous combustion -- just their smoking shoes remain -- when they reached a mental impasse. Nevertheless, an Evil Sister wannabe, the chronically clueless Buggins (Casey Seymour Kim), persists in pursuing her dream until she has the misfortune of getting what she wants.

It is moments like that last -- Kim's Buggins behaving colder as her innocence drains away -- that typify the all-around smart acting and consistently canny directing on display here. All the actors seem in command of these characters, most of which were written ambiguously enough to have fallen completely out of focus if not performed with understanding and authority. Each performance accomplishes something interesting. Elizabeth Anne Keiser is the bitchy teacher, melting like the Wicked Witch of the West when she admits to uncertainty. Constance Crawford is the unflappable headmistress, among other roles. John Holdridge is the wizardly Vademecum of Vadoo, David Tessier is a misguided fan of evil's sassy style, and Melissa D'Amico is an easily intimidated classmate.

Director Gilbert makes certain that at least one person on stage -- the corresponding actor -- knows where each of these characters is coming from. Girl Gone could flounder miserably as a play without such sure command, with Wellman's wild, charged language coming across as anarchist bombs rather than fireworks displays. Because the production as a whole is coherent, we may not understand every moment but we are never really lost. When the poetry comes across too fast to digest ("up in the sky is the desiccated chicken wing, whose song has died"), we can sit back and enjoy the show, confident that with another viewing we would sort out some more.

Energizing the goings-on as vitally as the sense of free-floating jeopardy is the undercurrent of humor. (Mother: "Hate the sin and not the sinner." Daughter: "The sin is the sinner." Mother: "That's a rather dark thought, young lady.") But music and movement also complement the grim subtext, expanding the theatricality nearly to bursting in the tiny Perishable black box. Heather Ahern's choreography is entrancing, ritualized, amusing. And the songs by Cynthia Hopkins are as haunting as the music by Alec K. Redfearn.

Girl Gone may need more viewing, parsing and head-scratching than can be accomplished in its 90 minutes. But fortunately, this is a production worth attending more than once.