‘Getting Out,’ a remarkable play in revival

Nearly four decades after “Getting Out,” Marsha Norman’s first play, premiered at Actors Theatre (as part of the 1977 Festival of New Plays), it still has the power to shock — though for quite different reasons these days.

Back then, the mere existence of a serious, naturalistic drama about a woman newly released from prison was something of a novelty. The candor and raw language of the script, with its unsparing discussions of sex work and sexual abuse, and brutal power relations between men, women, parents, children, guards and prisoners, were as searing and unsettling as they were compelling and moving (the play went on to a successful off-Broadway run, earned multiple awards and was the springboard for Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning career).

The new Looking for Lilith Theatre Company revival that opened last week at the UofL Thrust Theatre, under the direction of Shannon Woolley Allison, dives right into the spirit of the play. But perhaps the most shocking thing about the current production is that — a few period elements aside — the circumstances of the story are still much the same for newly-minted ex-cons. Their access to support services is inadequate. Their ability to enter the job market is severely constrained. And our social commitment to rehabilitation and reintegrating prisoners into society remains the heart of a fraught political question that, only in the last couple of years, seems to be moving grudgingly in new directions.

The central figure in Norman’s play is Arlene (Laura Ellis), just returned to Louisville after serving eight years in an Alabama prison for murder. Once known as Arlie, the new Arlene is focused on turning her life around, avoiding her past mistakes, working hard and finding a way to make a decent living. Alas, though she was able to get some education while in prison (“I took some beauty school,” she says), it won’t do her any good because, “They got a law here. Ex-cons can’t get no license.”

Still, the power of Arlene’s resolve is tangible in Ellis’ performance. She’s putting Arlie behind her — and refuses to be known by that name. She’s proud enough — and suspicious enough — to refuse even the most innocent gestures of courtesy or offers of help. She is focused on small acts that signal freedom and responsibility (the serious business of compiling a grocery list) and sensitive to anything that reminds her of prison (the bars over an apartment window that are designed to keep people out, trouble her). And if a carton of spilled milk may not be something for her to cry about, it still smacks of tragedy.

Norman’s brilliant stroke in this early work was to create a remarkable piece of split-stage drama in which Arlene’s reentry and Arlie’s earlier life play out simultaneously on the stage as a kind of theatrical counterpoint. Thus, while Arlene is settling into her apartment, we see Arlie (Samantha Watzek) in her earlier years. While Arlene is scheming to rip those bars from her window, Arlie is scheming to outfox a cop who has found her studying how to break into an apartment. Time and again, Norman sets up cunning juxtapositions of action, emotion and psychology that plunge us deeply into the ways Arlene and Arlie are connected — and disconnected — from one another.

It’s an astonishing piece of writing, and one that works here because Ellis and Watzek are well-matched both physically and in stagecraft: Arlene’s simmering resentments and honed reserve seem like a learned outgrowth of Arlie’s visceral fury (a fury Norman came to understand early in her career, when she taught emotionally disturbed children at the Children’s Treatment Service Center at Central State Hospital).

Both stages of Arlie/Arlene are in the midst of powerful transformations that are shaped by the people they encounter. For Arlie, those people include a mix of educators, bureaucrats, doctors, fellow inmates and guards, who are, by turn, frustrated, angry, manipulative, or perhaps just weary and cynical. Some of these characters are so short-lived on the stage that they seem more like instruments to advance the plot, rather than fully-realized people, but they’re still nicely depicted by Jill Marie Schierbaum and Ben Gierhart (both in multiple roles). More influential for Arlie is a Chaplain — who is never seen, and whose transfer to another institution is a shattering event for a prisoner on the cusp of change.

In Arlene’s life, two men are on the scene. A strange, shambling, well-intended (or so it seems) guard named Bennie (Eli Keel) is smitten enough with Arlene that he has resigned his post to give her a ride to Louisville in hopes of kindling a romance by bringing her houseplants and chewing gum. And there is Carl (Ben Unwin), who plays Arlene’s former pimp and criminal partner with the flashy full-fledged swagger of a white hoodlum trying for all his life to create the phony image of cinema pimp in a Blaxploitation flick. Nowadays, Unwin’s moves and costume designer Typh Hainer Merwath’s garb runs the risk of lapsing into campy humor — but there’s nothing funny about Unwin’s intentions (other technical contributions come from Scott Davis, scenic design; Casey Clark, lighting; and Laura Ellis, sound).

“Getting Out” is a remarkable play about an ex-convict — but looking back, it also feels like a watershed moment in the history of plays about and by women. And the two women who play important roles in Arlene’s life are marvels of writing and, in this production, acting. Arlene’s mother (portrayed magnificently here by Karole Spangler) is as finely written a character as you’ll find — dutiful, blunt, compassionate, and unyielding in her values. And Arlene’s new neighbor Ruby — a short-order cook whose search for her own redemption may be the key to Arlene’s — gets a witty, powerful performance from Jennifer Thalman Kepler that eventually yields the play’s fine closing epiphany.

This article appears in May 25, 2016.