Images: 
Total Rating: 
***
Previews: 
February 8, 2019
Opened: 
February 15, 2019
Ended: 
March 24, 2019
Country: 
USA
State: 
California
City: 
Los Angeles
Company/Producers: 
Ruskin Group Theater Company
Theater Type: 
Regional
Theater: 
Ruskin Group Theater
Theater Address: 
3000 Airport Avenue
Phone: 
310-397-3244
Website: 
ruskingrouptheatre.com
Running Time: 
2 hrs, 15 min
Genre: 
Comedy-Drama
Author: 
Ian McRae
Director: 
Jason Alexander
Review: 

Today’s Red/Blue battle is fought out in Ian McRae’s black comedy, The Joy Wheel, now in a world-premiere run at the Ruskin, directed by “Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander.

The conflict that divides the USA is encapsulated by McRae and takes place in a domestic arena, namely the mid-west household belonging to Frank and Stella Conlin, (Dann Florek and Gina Hecht), a seemingly typical American middle-class couple. 

Frank’s a big, overweight, conventional kind of guy who is retiring after 45 years of working in an office.  Stella’s a small, mousy, good-natured housewife who was raised Catholic.  When we first meet them, Frank is nervously rehearsing the speech he must to give at his retirement dinner, and Stella is suffering horribly from a bad case of sunburn.

From this sitcom-like opening things deepen and become more complex.  Stella, we learn, has been persuaded by her bawdy, free-spirited friend Margie (Lee Garlington) to take part in a local production of The Vagina Monologues.  Stella, who believed she was only committing to be an usher, is shocked to learn that she has been cast in the show. Which means she will be delivering a key speech having to do with her feelings about her own vagina.

Shock, horror!   Good Catholic that she is, vagina is not a word she has ever said in public before—or maybe even to herself.  She tries to quit the show, but Margie won’t hear of it.  It’s time you got in touch with your own sexuality, she tells her. The comment registers with Stella, who has not had sex with her impotent husband in more than a year, and is feeling frustrated and neglected. So with Margie’s help she begins to rehearse the monologue and,  just  as Margie predicted, is liberated by it, even turned on by it.

As Stella begins to shed her inhibitions and  to become a different person (going from red to blue, so to speak), Frank reacts badly.  First he tries to order her not to take part in the play; when she refuses to obey him he turns to his friend Stew (Maury Sterling), the head of a secret, right-wing organization called “The Group.”

Stew, who stalks around in military garb and spouts off about the need to “fight for a new world order” in the USA,  believes that emancipated women—and shows like The Vagina Monologues—are part of the liberal conspiracy that is destroying the country’s moral fiber.  He advises Frank to put his rebellious wife in her place and devote all his time and energy to The Group’s mission.

The Group, by the way, has a survivalist mentality, which is why Frank recently turned his house’s swimming pool into a bunker stocked with dried foods and containers of water.  Stella, who loved her pool and misses it badly, now begins to fight for its restoration.  Because Frank has never told her about his membership in The Group, she can’t understand why he is so damned stubborn about keeping the bunker the way it is.  For his part, he has taken a lifelong oath to obey The Group’s precepts, but it’s a commitment he begins to question, largely because of his growing realization that Stew is little more than a pistol-packing nut job. His political coloration then begins to evolve; to put it schematically, it goes from red to pink to light blue.

I think I’ve made The Joy Wheel seem a lot more serious and dark than it really is.  McRae generally writes with humor and was able to wring lots of laughs out of the audience.  He was also capable of writing with touches of warmth and tenderness, particularly in the final scene of the play.

Thanks to McRae’s  snappy, topical script and to Alexander’s skilled direction—and of course to the excellent work on the part of the cast—The Joy Wheel can be highly recommended.

Cast: 
Dann Florek, Gina Hecht, Lee Garlington, Maury Sterling
Technical: 
Set: John Iacovelli. Costumes: Sarah Figaten
Critic: 
Willard Manus
Date Reviewed: 
February 2019