Review: Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger Becomes a Patron Saint in WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW at triangle productions!

As the lights come up (though only slightly) on Monica Byrne's WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW, we hear the moans of young women discovering their bodies. They record the results of their attempts in a log book. It's awkward and funny, and it sets the stage for this provocative dramedy about four girls coming of sexual age in a Catholic reform school in 1914.

In the beginning, there's Anne (played by Sasha Belle Neufeld), who was sexually abused by her brother and is generally hostile and angry; Theresa (Emma Bridgers), whose first sexual experience was with a German doctor and who is very sex-positive; and Lucy (Katie Dessin), who is still very naive. They have recently lost a fourth roommate to a postpartum, or perhaps post-abortion, hemorrhage.

Then Joan (Lydia Fleming) appears and everything changes. Joan suffered abuse by her father after her mother was jailed for handing out a pamphlets on family planning by feminist activist Margaret Sanger (who in real life founded Planned Parenthood). She arrives with a suitcase full of contraband, including Sanger's pamphlets and a diaphragm, and introduces the girls to Sanger's ideas. Following a communal mystical experience, they adopt Sanger as the patron saint of their room.

Byrne describes the play as being "about the world that is possible when young women have sovereignty over their bodies, and the reality they face when they don't." The "world that is possible" part refers to the fantasy life they construct "where they travel the world, take lovers at will, and assassinate their enemies." As the play goes on, the girls construct more and more elaborate fantasies, they are finally brought back to the harsh reality of their situation (and the situation of all young women of the time) by an unplanned pregnancy.

It's a powerful idea, and highly relevant right now in election year as the funding for Planned Parenthood is again under attack. But the execution doesn't entirely live up to the promise. Many parts feel very cursory. For example, the fact that the girls recently lost a friend to a tragic death doesn't really seem to faze them or, more significantly, cause them to wonder how she got pregnant in the first place. And there are many unanswered questions. Did the doctor really send Theresa absinthe? Why? Had they really never discussed the priest? How many different symbolic meanings can you assign to an orange? The play moved at a fairly fast pace, but not quite fast enough to cover up the holes in the script.

Despite all of that, the four actors do a great job, particularly Lydia Fleming as Joan. Director Don Horn skillfully weaves the past into the present with modern music during their mystical experiences, which are well choreographed by Lisamarie Harrison. Overall, I enjoyed the production, but the play itself needs a little more meat to get its message across.

WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW runs through February 27. Get tickets at http://www.trianglepro.org/

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