Manic Flight Reaction: Sex, Drugs and Witty Banter

No, not all the hippies of the 60's and early 70's turned Republican as soon as they hit 45. Some of them, like the central character in Sarah Schulman's new comedy Manic Flight Reaction, can still be found smoking weed with their daughters while reminiscing about how much cheaper pot was in the good old days.

Marge (Deirdre O'Connell) is a fifty year old university professor ("I'm teaching Emma Goldman and her circle... which was a small circle because she didn't have many friends.") who manages to hold on to her ideals by avoiding much of the world around her. She never watches television, knows nothing of popular culture and the last time she voted was for Angela Davis. She's also unaware that the death of her aviator mother, the details of which she has kept secret from her college-aged daughter, is about to become the subject of a major motion picture (the play's title comes from an unhealthy method of escaping from one's problems and is also a pun regarding her mother's death), and that a former lover of hers is very likely to become the First Lady of the United States.

Schulman's play, as directed by Tripp Cullman, doesn't seem as deep as she probably intended it to be. But if you just skim the surface for political gags and social jabs, it still provides an entertaining two hours of laughs for left-wing playgoers.

Marge's daughter Grace (Jessica Collins) arrives for a visit with her corporate-moneyed boyfriend, Luke (Michael Esper), who she met in a class called Introduction to Domestic Violence. When a visiting reporter tricks Marge into revealing her past sexual relationship with the wife of the Republican presidential candidate, Grace and Luke see an opportunity to use national homophobia to bring down the candidate while making a few bucks for themselves by taping an admission of bi-sexuality.

Issues regarding personal privacy are volleyed about, but nothing is successfully explored much deeper that whatever it takes to dig up a punch line. Good punch lines, though. You want to know the cure for homosexuality? Fame! -- Pornography is domestic violence but it pays better than waitressing -- Now that McDonald's cash registers have pictures instead of numbers, workers only need to know what a Big Mac looks like.

O'Connell is impish and sweet in the lead role, but Collins and Esper get little of interest to work with. The rest of the cast play sketch comedy characters; Austin Lysy as Maggie's air-headed boy-toy, Angel Desai as a conniving journalist and Molly Price as the prim first lady to be. Price doubles as Marge's mother in a melodramatic flashback scene that does not work at all.

As a play with something to say about moral values and modern media, Manic Flight Reaction leaves something to be desired, but with the holiday season coming up I'm grateful to playwright Schulman for some good cocktail hour zingers.