IDA: WOMAN WHO RUNS WITH THE MOOSE!
By Susan Poulin (with Gordon Carlisle).
With: Susan Poulin.
At The Public Theatre in Lewiston, Maine.
From November 8 to November 17, 2002.
By Laurie Meunier Graves
There are many ways of being an outsider, and living in the hinterlands is
certainly one way. But race, ethnicity, class, and, at times, gender are
even better indications, and they cut across the urban/rural divide. By some
unspoken rule, outsiders know who they are just as surely as insiders know
who they are. Most of the time, outsiders never even have to say a word;
their status is sealed by the way they dress, look, and move. It’s almost as
though being an outsider has seeped into their pores and is as much a part
of them as their molecular structure.
In Ida: Woman who runs with the Moose!, Ida Le Clair lives in a
robin’s-egg-blue, double-wide mobile home with a satellite dish on the roof
in the fictional town of Mahoosic Mills, Maine. Her hair is teased into a
puff, she loves to line dance, and she has pink flamingo lawn ornaments. In
short, she’s the ultimate outsider. But Ida doesn’t waste time brooding
about her status. Instead, she revels in it. Two of her great enthusiasms
are shopping and going out with “the girls,” and Ida approaches life with
zest, humor, and genuine pleasure.
But her greatest enthusiasm is for her husband Charlie, and this one-woman
play revolves around their relationship, which has all the usual male/female
issues—the struggle for domination of the remote control, the husband not
talking enough, the wife talking too much. Ida ribs Charlie about his tics
and tendencies and is especially irritated by her husband’s “spousal
deafness.” But there is also genuine affection between the two, and Ida
gives Charlie the best compliment a working-class wife can give her husband,
that is, “he’s a hard worker.” There can be no higher praise.
As Ida, Susan Poulin is pitch perfect. From the moment she makes her
entrance—wearing blue eye shadow, a polka dot top, shorts with an elastic
waist that ties in the front, white sneakers, and footies with little
pom-poms—we see the gleam in her eye and know who she is. There is never a
false moment, and Ida’s earthy humor, which is sly and knowing, immediately
captivates the audience. With her Cheez-Its, her Moxie, and her lawn chair,
Ida brings us into her world, and we stay there for an hour and a half,
laughing most of the time.
This is no easy feat, and humor is perhaps one of the most underappreciated
forms of art. In Ida, Ms. Poulin is consistently funny and engaging.
Her humor, like all humor, has an edge, but it doesn’t draw blood, and along
with the edge, there is affection, which produces a nice balance.
In addition, Ms. Poulin is a skilled raconteur. Her use of language is vivid
and specific. Charlie drives a Dodge Dart, and her friend Shirley drives a
Bonneville, aquamarine to match her eyes. When Ida addresses an empty lawn
chair and talks to Charlie, we can almost see him sitting there with his own
sly grin. By the end of the evening, our faces ache with laughter; we
know these two very well and are glad we do.
