It’s been said that nearly 88% of private book clubs are all-female, a fact that likely wouldn’t surprise Dot, Meg, Carol, and Ellie, the four women who gather in a Minnesotan cabin in Karen Schaeffer’s play Girls’ Weekend (onstage at Circle Theatre through August 23rd).
They’re there to discuss their latest read—well, that’s the plan, anyway. But this is a farce, and farces mean complications.
The cabin belongs to Dot (Stacy Dawe), divorcée and mother. She has a loose, carefree approach to life—wait til you hear about the thank you note—and tends to smooth out her days with wine and her nights with sleeping pills. Carol (Dakota Riehl-Davis) could probably do with some smoothing out herself; bright and energetic, she closely monitors her fertility cycle, always alert to the moments when she should lower the drawbridge and let her husband in. Meg (Lorna Torres), newly widowed, is keeping a secret from the group: she’s seeing Dot’s son. Not even Ellie (Michaela Faith), Meg’s fun-loving daughter, knows about it.
There you have it, right? Food; wine; laughter; a little gossip; a little bawdy humor; and the comfort and warmth of women grateful for each other’s company: like sitting in a comfortable chair near a crackling fire. Only things get a little wilder than anticipated. Like someone had tossed a burning paper airplane into a fireworks factory.
It turns out Ellie had met a guy in town (Bubba, played by Drew Huegli). Bubba isn’t necessarily a name to inspire confidence, but she likes him anyway; she makes a comically elaborate plan to see him later that evening, after everyone else has gone to bed. So she hopes, anyway.
But there’s more: Stephen (Calvin Kim), Meg’s beau, shows up unexpectedly, tired of hiding their relationship from the world. Meg hides him. Sheriff Tom Lane (Dan Braker), a lonely, amiable guy, arrives to warn everyone about the conditions of the roads. And Rick (Troy Harvey), Carol’s husband, is en route home when he gets an urgent call: maximum fertility is now, so get back here, only don’t let anybody see you.
You guessed it: they’re not going to get to the book.
As the play goes on, things ramp up. Dot breaks out some pot (Schaeffer wrote the play in 2013, pre-legalization; Dot got a medical marijuana prescription for her dog, supposedly for glaucoma). That would be fine, if it weren’t for the wine, and the sleeping pills, and the sheriff, for God’s sake; before long Dot is dead to the world, although, thankfully, not dead herself. But it isn’t easy to hide a passed-out woman, it turns out, especially if you’re addled yourself, and especially if a sheriff’s knocking at the door.
Like the best farces, Girls’ Weekend makes one promise to its audience: it will entertain them. And it does that in spades, from the high-pitched absurdity of its most frantic moments to the individuality it grants each of its characters. An unpretentious decency shine through each character (well, maybe not Bubba).
Faith, who looks like a midwestern Alexis Bledel, plays Ellie as a bored, good-hearted girl, a type familiar to most people; who hasn’t known (or been) her? Her performance seemed effortless, as did that of Riehl-Davis, whose Carol would surely wrap you a plate of something to go—if it wasn’t ovulation time, anyway. Kim’s Stephen seems built from a foundation of solid happiness. And it’d be impossible to dislike Braker’s sheriff, who just can’t stop himself from lingering.
The set design nicely evokes the warmth of a cabin and the cold of the wintry world outside it. Also nicely evoked is the early 21st century, by the cell phones, the clothing, and, best of all, the music, which is sure to take audience members back to a time that will seem (to some) to be yesterday.
More than anything else, Girls’ Weekend is fun. There are plays designed to put audiences through the wringer—to grind their faces into the unbearable tragedies of the world. Those who want that are welcome to it. For the rest of us, well, we’ll take the cabin.
Girls' Weekend
Circle Theatre
Aug. 7-23
https://circletheatre.org/production/girls-weekend/
