Review: Dead White Males at the Hideout Theater

Downs' play, though unsurprising to anybody who has been exposed to the American public school system in the past twenty years, handles the daily frustrations of teaching with deft humor, especially in the first act. Operating under a seemingly endless onslaught of moronic administrators and Brazil-like paperwork, new teacher Janet befriends her burnt-out senior colleagues and tries not to lose heart as she wrangles hyper kids and attempts to toe the official line while still teaching, uh, anything at all.

There are a few major missteps in the text, though the piece is simply and elegantly handled by STP's small cast, with a spare set evoking a typical post-WWII cement block public school. Six identical chairs and a few other pieces make up the stage furnishings. The effectiveness of scenic simplicity is two-fold: first, with the audience cast as the class of students (complete with halfhearted responses to a teacher's request for an energetic “Good morning!”), a crowded stage would be a distraction.

More importantly, the clean stage means we get to focus on the acting, which is engaging and at times deeply moving. Downs' characters all fit rough stereotypes: the bright-eyed newbie, the blustering, conservative administrator, the cynical veteran teachers. Two actors get the chance to really shine—the transformation of Molly Fonseca's Janet from chipper to browbeaten feels depressingly real, but Suzanne Balling's frustrated veteran teacher, Doris, is the reason to see this production. At first, she interacts with Janet at an exhausted, bemused distance, but their friendship quietly grows as the vise of administrative conservatism slowly squeezes them, and Doris' breakdown is a moving dramatic climax of this show.

It is a shame, then, that Downs saddles the end of the play with a lame Fox News-worthy shocker and a dénouement boring as dry toast—the actors and audience both deserve more than that. There is another concern about the effectiveness of this piece. This is a straightforward production—even at its most absurd, the situation Downs lays out is not outside the realm of reality. There is little room for the spectator to be taken by surprise, and that begs the question of whether this show has any opportunity to change minds and encourage action that could put the brakes on the politicking that has strangled our teachers' ability to just teach.