Produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble, featuring Alisha Spielmann and Chinaza Uche. Fourth Street Theatre, New York.

In the interests of self-disclosure, in high school I was a geek. Studied hard, didn’t date or attend prom, played Dungeons & Dragons. Game consoles were primitive, and we all thought that George Lucas was done with Star Wars. Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t premiere until a year after I graduated, so we contented ourselves with the original series in reruns on Saturdays. Really, high school is an exercise in Campbell’s myth analysis. Decades later, we can point very accurately to who played the wise Mentor, the Gatekeeper, the Trickster. August Schulenburg’s Jane the Plain nods to the epic nature of high school (and it does feel epic when you’re going through it) with its struggles to know who we are and how we fit into the greater universe. The result is a funny, poignant, and sometimes brutal look at how those four years leave a lasting mark.
The story follows Jane the Plain who is, well, plain. Played by Alisha Spielmann, Jane is not too pretty, smart, a little geeky—utterly average and trying to fit in at Plainview High. She’s noticed by Scotty the Hotty (Chinaza Uche), the Jaguars’ star quarterback, and, instead of studying chemistry, she gives in to chemistry of another sort. After Scotty leaves her in his bed, Jane decides to take a nude selfie and send it, along with some touching words, to him. This quickly makes the high school rounds—text after text. Soon, Leeson the Decent (Chester Poon), Leonard the Awkward (Isaiah Tannenbaum), Lexi the Sexy (Sol Crespo), and Betty the Pretty (Becky Byers) know everything. Leonard, who has spent all his time in Jane’s friendzone, feels betrayed, while Betty, who wants Scotty for herself, attempts revenge. All Jane reaps from this is humiliation after Scotty largely ignores her.
Running into the rain in a futile attempt to escape, Jane sees the Glowing Girl about to be hit by a car. Shoving her out of the way, the saved supernatural being grants Jane a glimpse of the universe, of the beauty of creation, and a part of this beauty attaches to Jane. The other students can’t resist her. Everyone wants to be with her, to be her friend; even Becky can’t seem to help herself. Only Lexi seems to realize that Jane has been changed and tries to warn her. Jane, however, is too entranced with this new-found popularity and power.
Betty does manage to get revenge by staging a cheerleading accident for Jane. While in the hospital, Jane begins to realize that perhaps Lexi was right, especially when Scotty attempts to rape her. But Leonard walks in recording everything on his phone, which stops Scotty. But what Scotty sees is not a phone but something more sinister from his past. Jane just wants to be left alone, which angers her one-time friend. In retaliation, Leonard joins up with Betty, and the two alter the footage, providing a voice-over to make it sound like Jane rejects Scotty because she’s a lesbian. Once again, the material goes viral, leaving Jane’s reputation in tatters. Only Lexi tries to understand Jane, coming out to her, and the two start a tentative relationship.
As with all good high-school dramas, the action culminates at the Homecoming dance and game. Lexi and Jane are named homecoming queens. Scotty remembers his childhood nemesis, the Mirror Man, who spreads death, and runs off into the night, leaving Leeson to QB for the Jaguars. At this point, the overachieving Betty has had it and uses her AP-level knowledge of chemistry to make a bomb to kill Jane, because no one would expect a pretty girl to be smart enough to make a bomb. Her plans don’t come to fruition. Scotty attempts to jump from the Jumbotron to kill himself. Rather than making for the end zone where the bomb is planted, Jane, Lexi, and the now reconciled Leonard attempt to save him with the Homecoming float. What results is an epic battle between Jane and Scotty, the avatars of the Glowing Girl and the Mirror Man, the universe and beauty versus emptiness and death. The bomb goes off, the universe wins, and all things return to as they were before Jane met the Glowing Girl.
Except Jane.
BETTY: She walked, away from the burning grass blazing in the dusk, and thought about lust, and thought about love, and then thought—
LEXI: There should be a word for the thing between lust and love.
BETTY: That thing that seems like love when the light is right.
LEESON: That game two people play when they want to love and be loved so much, days can go by—
BETTY: Whole weeks—
LEXI: Where they remember to forget that it isn’t, not really.
LEESON: Jane walked, knowing if she could find the word for that between thing, losing it wouldn’t hurt so much.
LEONARD: She knew the word needed to begin with “l” and be one syllable. “Life.... That was the sound for all this between.”
Kelly O’Donnell once again directed an ensemble cast with the same innovative physicality she utilized in the Flux Theatre Ensemble production of Dog Act (NYRSF 274). Alisha Spielmann made Jane an Everywoman with her earnest naiveté concerning social circumstances which complemented in many ways Chinaza Uche’s clueless beefcake portrayal of Scotty the Hotty. In the final showdown as the avatars for Glowing Girl and Mirror Man, the two actors truly appeared larger than themselves in the battle for humanity’s existence.
In many ways, the story belongs to Jane and yet is told through all of the characters, who each act as a narrator at points in the play. I continue to love watching Becky Byers morph into whatever character she plays. Betty the Pretty was no exception; Byers was deliciously evil. I’m not just saying this because cookies were served to the audience during the prom scene. Okay. Maybe. But they were Entenmann’s chocolate chip, so I think I can be forgiven any bias. Isaiah Tanenbaum, Sol Crespo, and Chester Poon rounded out the various student clique representations as Leonard the Awkward, Lexi the Sexy, and Leeson the Decent. Schulenburg’s script gave each of them a delightfully meaty moment in which the character fractured, allowing the audience to see the uncertain teen inside—one much greater than the role they played in the high school hierarchy and beyond the simplistic titles hinting at their personality.
I like clever sets, and small theatres require them. Will Lowry’s design for Plainview High didn’t disappoint. An irregular section of school hallway in purple and teal dominated up center. Decorated with bulletins, a calendar, a single locker, and a delightful “Read” poster of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (a really entertaining book that I recommend), the upstage wall served multiple purposes, including Scotty the Hotty’s bedroom. While this might have been done in such a way to lessen the impact of the high school set, always seeing the high school underscored the school environment’s omnipresence in the life of a teen. I particularly liked the two panels on each wall which, when folded out, displayed slogans for the Jaguars, but, when turned flush to the wall, revealed lockers for the students. Rounding out the set were a small set of bleachers and a floor motif suggesting the football field.
While one would expect the play’s influences to be material such as the Percy Jackson series or really any number of young adult works dealing with high school and fantasy, what really comes out in Schulenburg’s work is a much older tale told through the ages in various forms. The “loathly lady” finds expression in the Irish Fenian Cycle in Diarmuid and the Loathly Lady, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Norse Hrólfr Kraki’s Saga, Arthurian legend in the Marriage of Sir Gawaine and Dame Ragnelle, and Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” In all of these, an ugly woman is transformed by a man wanting or being tricked to be with her. She becomes incredibly beautiful and desirable, and the ugliness was just a curse. I supposed if you squinted really hard, you could manage to only walk away with the notion that things are not always as they seem on the surface. And yet.... Essentially, a woman is saved by a man and, in spite of her lack of beauty, he transforms her with his attentions. Beauty, physical beauty, is always the end result. Can you hear my scorn?
Schulenburg, however, is a crafty playwright and upends the old tale. The girl is average, but her act of saving the Glowing Girl makes her not so much beautiful—though there is that—as larger than herself. Spielmann’s outward appearance as Jane is not changed, but her confidence, that sense of being kissed by the universe, makes her greater. The real focus of the conflict is not on Jane’s beauty or lack thereof, but between the life-granting forces of the Glowing Girl and the destructive power of the Mirror Man.
Jane the Plain offers a different take on the teen experience—a John Hughes-meets-Joseph Campbell, Pretty in Myth portrait. The production acknowledged the beautiful, comic, and frightening tipping point we all face between the either/or of childhood and the both/and of being an adult without waxing nostalgic, and while it makes some simplifications as a nod to the “genre” of teen shows, it complicates these as well—with cell phones and avatars of larger things. It gave the audience what high school memories always are at heart—a fairy tale containing a few hard-won lessons.
Jen Gunnels lives in the never-ending high school known as The Adult World, as do we all.
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