Betty's Summer Vacation

It's been a rough decade for Christopher Durang. A handful of lukewarm scripts had people wondering if the vicious and yet strangely empathetic edge of his writing had been lost forever. Thankfully, with Betty's Summer Vacation, Durang is back with style. This bizarre allegory about our tendency to turn real-life tragedy into entertainment is right on the money and has all the earmarks of Durang's best scripts: A likeable but ineffectual central character fighting desperately for normality, an insane matriarch, and a cadre of strange characters imbued with an inhuman honesty that is unintentionally brutal, and completely hysterical. This will not be to everyone's taste; there are vile situations played for laughs (including a rape - possibly Durang's most disturbing writing since "The Nature and Purpose of the Universe"), and a healthy dose of absurdism and audience alienation. But if you like to think and laugh and be disgusted all at the same time, pick up Betty's Summer Vacation. If your idea of theatre comedy is, say Run For Your Wife, you best keep running.