Boy Gets Girl
Source:  New City - Chicago

Finally, a voice. Answering all the pseudo-feminist claptrap that has blossomed since "The Feminine Mystique" (Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi and Madonna being perhaps the most visible examples), Rebecca Gilman has created a theatrical scream that could pierce the sky. "Boy Gets Girl," directed by Michael Maggio, is a story as common as dirt, the telling of which is as necessary as oxygen. No, all women don't get stalked as happens to magazine writer Theresa Bedell (Mary Beth Fisher). But Gilman uses stalking as a means to rip the lid off more than a few cans of society's ugliest and most maddening worms. Take this initial reaction by Bedell's editor Howard (Matt DeCaro), to the fact that her rejected suitor is constantly calling and sending huge arrangements of phallic-shaped flowers at least once a day: "He just doesn't know what to do," Howard shrugs. The implicit assumption: "Poor guy, he's smitten. Be nice." Be nice to a stalker? It's the quintessentially clueless male response. Or take the obsessed Tony's (Ian Lithgow) whining, irrational condescension to Bedell's rebuffs. "I'm just trying to help you figure things out," he says. Subtext: She can't commit because she's a cold bitch. She's so emotionally damaged by her career that she can't make friends. He's gong to help her through this. It's enough to curdle blood. So is Gilman's bald observation that men are culturally programmed to ogle women's asses and women are likewise programmed to be flattered by such behavior. It is a portrait of a poisonous, twenty-first-century culture Gilman vividly etches in "Boy Gets Girl." And it is an uncompromisingly accurate, dramatically satisfying portrait. The assault on women is rampant, from the pages of "Vogue" to the misogyny of the WWF. Anyone who has been raised amid such cultural toxins (and that would be everyone not living in a cave) would be well served by taking in the searing honesty of "Boy Gets Girl." (Catey Sullivan)

Goodman Studio Theatre, 200 S. Columbus,
(312)443-3800.
Wed-Thu 7:30/Fri-Sat 8pm/Sun 2pm & 7:30pm. Also
March 28 and April 4, 7:30pm; March 16, 23, 25 & 30
and April 8, 2pm. $29-$42. Through April 8.