LET ME COUNT THE WAYS
Reading directed by Linda Britt; book & lyrics written by Linda Britt; music
by Colin Britt
Made in Maine Theater Reading Series
At Bangor Public Library, Bangor, Maine
February 21, 2004
Reviewed by Rick Doyle
Linda Britt is a professor of Spanish at the University of Maine at
Farmington, where she has taught since 1988. She is also an accomplished
playwright. Her first play, Billionaire Vegans, was produced last
June in Auburn under Britt’s direction. Her new play is Let Me Count the
Ways, a two-act musical comedy which was read at the Bangor Public
Library as part of the ongoing Made in Maine Theater Workshop series.
Britt has teamed up with her son, Colin Britt, on both plays. The clearly
gifted Mr. Britt is now a freshman majoring in composition at the Hartt
School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Mother and son have also written a
play for children called Who’s Running the School? The February
reading in Bangor featured a well-received performance of one song with
piano accompaniment.
Nicknamed by its author “A Revenge Musical,” Let Me Count the Ways
handles the very serious topic of divorce with a heart that is both light
and wise. Read by a cast of seven women and two men, this urbane comedy
charmed the small audience it had brought in out of the winter weather. Like
all of the readings in the Made in Maine Theater series, this one took place
in the upstairs Lecture Room of the Bangor Public Library.
The play charts the highs and lows in the life of its protagonist, Karen,
whose husband has just left her at the opening of Act One. The friends who
help Karen get back on her feet introduce themselves in a Prologue, where
each details the circumstances of her own split-up. The actresses reading
these parts in Bangor did a nice job, in the Prologue, of giving the
audience a glimpse of their personalities and thus hinting at the roles they
would play in Karen’s journey. In the course of helping Karen, the friends
also concoct a handful of plots, ranging from the inventive to the bizarre,
for getting rid of all their ex-husbands without getting caught. The story
is simple and elegant. It can’t help but be familiar, as well, in a society
where the divorce rate hovers at around fifty percent. In a nutshell, Karen
does get back on her feet, learning some tough lessons along the way.
“It's really a play about friendship,” says Britt, who points out that “No
one actually dies... though at one point a gun does make an appearance.”
There is a gun. There’s missing money, as well, and even a private
investigator. But this is a musical, after all, and to some extent the plot
is a vehicle for allowing the cast to burst into glorious song. Britt’s
lyrics are witty, but I will pay her the compliment of saying that the songs
all have an unlabored feel. Perhaps the most fully developed lyrics are to
be found in “Hav-a-heart”—yes, like the trap—a deliciously comical
catch-and-release fantasy made up of alternating verse and narrative. The
sentiments belong to Laura, a part read on this occasion by the author. All
of the women in the cast join in on the refrain, “Have-a-heart,
Have-a-heart, She’s looking for a Hav-a-heart.” There is something achingly
sweet but sad about this song. Indeed, the same thing might be said of the
play as a whole.
Britt has said that her writing starts with the intrigue of a hypothetical
question. In the case of Billionaire Vegans, this meant asking, “What
if some really rich radical vegans decided to try to take over the fast food
industry by buying up a chain of burger joints?" In Let Me Count the Ways
the question is buried deeper in the stuff of our private lives. Perhaps the
question might be formulated, “What if we played out the fantasies of
revenge our intimate disasters give rise to?” We might have the satisfaction
of making those who hurt us suffer, but given the fact that we remain
connected to them, for better or worse, even after separation, we exact
vengeance only at our own expense. Not that anyone successfully acts on such
fantasies, in this play, where gestures in that direction miscarry to comic
effect.
The playwright has easily cleared the hurdles presented by this project.
There were perhaps two major challenges: writing about divorce without
depressing the audience, and writing about women and divorce without bashing
men. As to the first challenge, as I have tried to indicate, Britt is a
capable writer of comedy. The reading got some well-earned laughs, and a
full production—complete with hats, guns, cross-dressing, and so on —will
open up plenty of opportunities for visual gags and conceits. The chorus
line of ex-husbands is truly something to be looked forward to. The second
challenge is perhaps the tougher one—maybe because it really is tempting to
bash men who abandon their marriages on grounds that are whimsical at best
and often fraught with hormonal implications. But Britt has written the
men’s parts with compassion, even as she has been unsparing in her
observation of their vanity and uncompromising about the stupidity and
selfishness of their worst behavior. We get glimpses of what these men have
given up, for example, when they talk about their children. And, without
revealing too much, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Karen’s
husband, Mike, at the end of the play.
Let Me Count the Ways is a work in progress, but the Bangor reading
showed that all of the elements are in place. The cast was clearly excited
by her script. So was the audience. Post-reading response included a few
questions about the possibility of a full production. Let’s hope there is
one in the near future and that Britt has a chance to develop her
considerable playwriting skills even further.
