Body and soul

Gretty captures a woman's gritty spirit

by Johnette Rodriguez

GRETTY GOOD TIME. By John Belusso. Directed by Vanessa Gilbert. With Donna Lubrano, Joanne Liao, David Lockhart, Ron Clark, Wendy Feller, and Chris Watson. At Perishable Theatre through March 28.

John Belluso's Gretty Good Time is not about "the good times," at least not the good times most of us think of. For Gretty has post-polio paralysis, with only the use of her right arm, and, more significantly, she is confined to a nursing home because she has no family and no money that would allow her other options -- this is 1955, and there are very few independent living programs for people with disabilities.

But Gretty explores the only options she has left -- her dream life, her wacky 60-something friend McCloud and a budding interest in her from the new doctor at the nursing home. Her dream life is spun out of a "This is Your Life" episode which featured one of the "Hiroshima maidens," 25 young women who were brought to the States for plastic surgery 10 years after the bomb blast. She becomes friends with Hideko, the "maiden" featured on the show, and the two of them try to travel backward in time, before the blast, before the death of Gretty's younger brother, maybe even before the onset of the polio that has left Gretty immobilized.

If the juxtaposition of these characters (and who could be more of a "character" than Ralph Edwards himself?) seems like a risky choice for a new playwright, it is well worth the gamble. As Belluso pushes us to think about his characters' lives, he also opens windows onto the systems that are shaping their lives. And he ultimately shows us that human triumphs come from standing up to those systems and changing them.

Director Vanessa Gilbert has pulled remarkable performances from her cast and, despite numerous scene changes, has kept the pace on track. The staging as a whole, with set design by Jeremy Woodward, lighting by Deb Sullivan and sound by Tom Buckland, is very effective, with several white curtains which are pulled across long overhead rods hospital-style to carve out different rooms and spaces on the stage. With judiciously used back-lighting for certain scenes and shadowy projections for others, we are moved nimbly across time and space and mood.

Donna Lubrano as Gretty turns in a remarkable performance, creating a full, vibrant person locked inside a body over which she has so little control. Since she only has her head and neck with which to gesture, and her face and voice to give nuance to her lines, Lubrano must find ever-shifting ways to vary tempo, diction and volume to get across Gretty's feelings. She does so memorably, conveying Gretty's outrage at doctors handling her limp limbs as if they didn't belong to her body, her despair and guilt over her brother's death, her determination to protect her friend McCloud. And her firm resolution to decide her own fate.

Joanne Liao as Hideko is stunningly poignant, wearing a red-scarred mask (kudos to costume designer Ron Cesario) that keeps her tragedy square in our face. Liao gives us a young coed bursting with enthusiasm for her college life, cynical about her "mission" in the States and longing to once again be that innocent child who was skinnydipping with her friends when her mother called to her that planes were coming over.

David Lockhart as Captain Robert Lewis, one of the pilots who dropped the bomb, and one of the people brought onto the real-life episode of "This is Your Life" is meet Hideko (is truth stranger than fiction, or what?), skillfully delivers a heart-wrenching and almost wordless moment when he hands Hideko his pocket watch, so symbolic of the time she has lost and such a shocking reminder of that stopped-watch image from Hiroshima.

Lockhart is also good as Dr. Henry, who befriends Gretty and begins to understand the dehumanizing effects of the nursing home. Ron Clark capably plays his nemesis Dr. Caplan, the home's administrator, who is all too aware of what his patients pay for their care.

Wendy Feller is irrepressible as the scheming, imaginative McCloud, intent on "breaking out" of the home. And Chris Watson is appropriately unctuous and obnoxious as Ralph Edwards.

A sterling cast for a sterling play. Gretty has had limited productions in D.C. and L.A., but this is its first extended run. Make sure you catch it before it soars in New York and you can't get tickets.