Lorelei Lemon and Seth Blum in A KID LIKE JAKE
RALEIGH, NC – A good friend of mine entered second grade this week. While babysitting for the family earlier in the pandemic, I’d noticed their already iconoclastic tastes in fashion: tie-died t-shirt and dungarees bisected by a tutu, or a favored sheet wrapped into an ad hoc configuration between a toga and a skirt. By the time siblings and friends had exhausted me with their endless, epic battles and intrigues in the neighborhood forest – “Monster” was their favorite game by far – sticks, leaves, clods of mud and mild abrasions had added an earthy, devil-may-care note to the general couture and maquillage, for us all.
Finally, school beckoned, with forms to be filled out. Some parts were easier than others. Name, age, address: clear answers for all.
Then there was the line for gender. After some deliberation between parent and child, the word “unicorn” was written on the page. It’s been there ever since, for a bright youth who very naturally, comfortably, and with their family’s love and full support, had obviously left the gender binary far behind, years before.
Above: probably the optimal case for a child who has determined for themselves that traditional gender roles had never really had all that much to do with them.
The decidedly less than optimal case we find in the riveting inaugural production by Vixen Theatre of A Kid Like Jake.
Regional theater has explored terrain adjacent to this and done so more recently than in this play’s regional premiere ten years ago at Deep Dish Theatre. There’s little doubt that mother Alex and father Greg, the professional couple at the center of playwright Daniel Pearle‘s domestic drama, are every bit as neighborly, pleasant, well-educated and politically liberal as the title couple in Nice White Parents 2016, Tamara Kissane’s controversial drama that premiered in Greensboro last year.
And like them, these parents, and the folks around them, are surprised when they find themselves paralyzed – or, actually, actively resistant – when forced to confront a different crossroads in the country’s culture and politics.
Certainly no one was racist – or not exactly, at least – in Kissane’s dissection of a crisis at an elementary school in a small Southern town at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. And certainly no one’s exactly a homophobic bigot here in Pearle’s knowing take on the pressurized competition to position preschool kids (at ages 3 and 4) to be accepted into one of the pricier private elementary schools in New York City.
At least, not until the evidence mounts suggesting that the title character is engaging in an increasing amount of “gender-variant play,” as Judy, Alex’s friend and a specialist in early childhood education, notes while attempting to prep Jake for a prep school kindergarten.
Because for some time now, Jake’s been enchanted with the girls in fairy tales, from Disney to the Brothers Grimm, that his mom has read to him. His favorite toy is a Cinderella doll, and he’s been taking on the roles of heroines in dress-up time at pre-school, as well as at home and at play.
Benji Jones and Seth Blum in A KID LIKE JAKE
But lately, when that play’s not only remained unacknowledged, but has been actively thwarted by Alex, Jake’s been on a downward spiral. He had a total meltdown at Halloween when Alex wouldn’t let him dress up as Elsa from Frozen, after his father said he could. Since then, his teacher’s noticed that Jake’s gradually grown more obsessive, more withdrawn. On his birthday, he fearfully whispered to her his most special wish for his birthday: to be a girl.
Well before these escalations, Judy’s been telling Alex that Jake is very special and unusual, hoping she’ll pick up on the hints. When she reads Alex’s application essays for schools, Judy says, “There’s sort of a big part of his personality that you don’t really mention.”
Though Alex claims she doesn’t want Jake “going off to kindergarten labeled as anything,” she adamantly resists having Greg, a psychotherapist, participate in the application process or recommend Jake see another therapist to ask about his gender struggles.
Increasingly, Alex’s neuroses spin out as she demands total control of who defines her child, and turns on anyone who doesn’t share that definition, or sees something that she doesn’t want to see.
Noted director Michelle Murray Wells set new benchmarks for independent, modern drama in Raleigh before real estate reversals forced the closure of her Sonorous Road Theatre in 2019. After she rebuilt the drama program at St. Mary’s School, it’s heartening to see her return to public practice with a return to form as well, in this taut psychological drama, drawn out of current issues and carefully cast from the area’s deep bench of professional-level actors.
Maybe my recent film noir jag is to blame, but there’s at least a hint of Joan Crawford in Vixen co-founder Lorelei Lemon‘s take on Alex. She starts off at the outset as a sympathetic, busy mom, contending with a demanding child (and even more demanding mother). But under Wells’ direction, Alex’s dark side gradually blossoms and deepens, as the character contends with long-buried resentments and triggers from her own dystopic childhood in a wealthy family, until her fears ultimately drive her off a metaphorical cliff in a jaw-dropping second-half confrontation. Pearle’s, Wells’ and Lemon’s achievement here involves showing the clear trajectory of a psychological car crash, one in which a character we care about ultimately embraces a paranoid, homophobic position that alienates her from her community – and us.
Respected veteran actor Seth Blum explores the increasing tensions in Greg’s codependent relationship with Alex, and the misgivings he has about his wife’s relationship with his son. Authoritative Benjy Jones, another long rider on the region’s stages, anchors her scenes as the early childhood education specialist Judy, whose candor about Jake ultimately puts her in Alex’s crosshairs. Rising actor Nunna Noe brings an enigmatic edge to a figure in a dream of Alex’s, and as an ob/gyn nurse.
When traumas remain unaddressed, they cross generations in families. Wells and her crew explore here a specific inflection point where that transfer can take place once again, in a suspenseful work that gives a modern social scourge a very human face.
