STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Racial tension ‘round the campire

1/1/2012

0 Comments

 
​What could be more wholesome than a moms-and-daughters Girl Scout getaway in the mountains? Campfires. Sing-alongs. S’mores. If that’s what you’re expecting out of Janece Shaffer’s one-act Brownie Points, now on stage at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado, hold on to your merit badges.
            The story of Scout moms Allison (Karson St. John), Deidre (Monique Gaffney), Sue (Cynthia Gerber), Nicole (Kaja Amado Dunn) and Jamie (Erika Beth Phillips) and their unseen daughters camping out (actually they’re inside a cabin) in the north Georgia mountains begins innocently enough. Everything is good-natured chaos, as is typical of trips like these, and the mothers’ chief anxiety is focused on the girls in their charge having a good time. But when the two African-American moms, Deidre and Nicole, discover that bossy Allison has assigned them kitchen duties for the duration of the weekend, all hell (or heck, lest any of the impressionable daughters be listening) breaks out. The tone of Shaffer’s play, directed for Lamb’s by Deborah Gilmour Smyth, shifts from carefree to tense, and the volume is ratcheted up to the level of talking heads on a cable “news” show.
            The fuse is lit when Deidre calls Allison a racist, and we don’t find out until much later that more than the kitchen assignment had something to do with the accusation. The noisy confrontation and resulting chasm between these two women, with the other three mothers in varied degrees of exasperation, makes Brownie Points anything but a group bonding experience. Or so we think. The last scene, unwinding at 2 in the morning long after the Scouts are asleep, brings all the moms, even the combatants, peacefully together again. So much so that the Carpenters’ saccharine “Close To You” finds its way into the proceedings.
            There is much baring of soul and conscience in Brownie Points, and to some degree the comic relief ceases to relieve. Once we know Deidre’s story of what happened on her way up to the mountains, the rest just doesn’t seem funny, or much fun, anymore. That could well be playwright Shaffer’s point. If so, a closure more powerful than the one delivered is called for. The Carpenters don’t cut it.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page