Atlanta's Out Front Theatre arrived last fall with a production of "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and a mission to serve the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intergender and allied (LGBTQIA) communities.
Occupying the Westside space vacated by Fabrefaction Theatre Conservatory, Out Front journeys now from the world of splashy Broadway musical to that of intimate ensemble play.
Directed by Paul Conroy, the theater’s founding and producing artistic director, Daniel Pearle’s “A Kid Like Jake” is the story of a Manhattan couple coming to grips with a 4-year-old who’d rather dress up as Snow White than be a pirate for Halloween. (Or, as Jake’s preschool headmistress puts it in rather academic and PC terms, he displays “gender-variant behavior.”)
We never meet the precocious little boy at the heart of the bristling one-act. Rather, we witness his mother, Alex (Lauren Megan McCarthy), and his father, Greg (Justin Dilley), navigate the process of trying to gain him admission into one of New York’s expensive and competitive private schools — with all the nail-biting and hand-wringing that such an experience can elicit.
At the suggestion of Judy (Lisa Boyd), the school’s headmistress, the parents decide to highlight their son’s unconventional personality rather than mask it. As the drama unfolds, that strategy leads to much anxiety, tension, second-guessing and finger-pointing. And the toll of the hysteria is considerable: A marriage is nearly destroyed, and Alex’s confidence as a mother is shattered.
Given that gender identity and public vs. private education have become political hot potatoes in America today, “A Kid Like Jake” is a smart, thoughtful and provocative choice for Out Front. It’s a study in relationships, intimacy, ambition, and how authority figures can transfer their fixations onto the fragile psyches of the young.
I’ve always felt that much of the discomfort parents feel over their children’s gender- and sexual-preference issues often isn’t so much a matter of judging as worrying: They love their kids and seek to protect them from what is almost certain to be a pattern of name-calling and bullying, especially in their tender early years.
Such a mother is Alex, who would prefer to think that Jake is going through a phase and doesn’t need counseling. She’s too proud, perhaps, to admit the truth.
While Greg, a therapist by profession, stands ready to comfort and calm, Judy shows an uncommonly strong interest in Jake’s future: There’s a strong streak of competitiveness and calculation in her every move, which Boyd conveys with some empty manic tics and gestures (pacing, scribbling notes, shuffling papers).
While Conroy and his team deliver a handsome production (the set is by Michael Murphy, costumes by Stephanie Carter and lighting by Charles Swift), the acting is not the strongest. The weight of the tale falls on the Alex character, and though McCarthy is a solid, hardworking performer, she can’t quite communicate the stealthy interior undoing that is the misfortune of Alex. Dilley’s account of Greg is a bit glib and lightweight, the humor unexploited, and Boyd fails to find the irony in Judy’s grandstanding and academic posturing. (Her portrayal too often feels like straightforward, earnest and not altogether credible line-reading.)
In the end, we see the consequences of a mother’s vanity, a father’s ineffectuality, and a schoolmistress’s overreaching agenda. Much self-interest is at play here. As for how it affects Jake, we can only guess.
Ultimately, while I admire Out Front’s choice of material, the production feels like a lost opportunity. What could be an evening of edgy and absorbing theater seems a little half-baked.
But like Jake, Out Front is just starting to figure out its place on the landscape. Early missteps are to be expected. So let’s give this fledgling theater a chance to grow and succeed, to give voice to stories that might otherwise go untold.
THEATER REVIEW
“A Kid Like Jake”
Grade: C+
Through Feb. 26. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. $15-$25. Out Front Theatre, 999 Brady Ave. N.W., Atlanta. 404-448-2755, outfronttheatre.com.
Bottom line: A timely play but performances lack rigor.
