And now, since it's on the table, I feel the need to say that I’m not transgender, either. Beyond the people I've known, my main exposure to the issues faced by that community is through a writing group of which I'm a member. Together, we work as a group to explore and eliminate gender bias from our journalistic writing, which has enlightened me in many ways out of my own ignorance — or at least enough to see my blind spots. As a person new to Florida and the theater scene here, I dreaded the potential for insensitivity.
I have never been happier to be so wrong.
Between the writing, directing, and acting, there isn’t a false note. Symons handles the main character’s gender so skillfully that it’s not, in fact, what the play is even about. This gives me hope for a time when there won't be the need to include the transgender identifier in the promotional material, and works like this bring that idea closer. That said, gender does play a role in shaping the character’s emotional arc, in much the way ethnicity might.
When Amy (Alexia Jasmene) meets Nell (Minka Wiltz) in a South Florida motel room, each one needs the other to fulfill their own agenda. But both are keeping secrets. As these veteran actors unpack their mysteries, the audience is given much to think about.
Wiltz’s Nell is a tour de force, at turns charming, bitter, eloquent and crude, and often in the same sentence. She delivers zingers about God and the bible like, "Only God does the judging, and I ain't got much use for him no more." Then there's, "I make up my own damn mind if it's a Good Book." She's also a hopeless drunk, but we never lose faith in her clarity.
Jasmene brings just the right touch to Amy, who tells us in her first lines that she was born Wednesday and is full of woe. The character is an overly-responsible young adult who occasionally shows signs of her petulant teen years. At six feet tall, she is also imposing. Yet Jasmene has the uncanny ability to shrink and expand as the role demands.
There is no screed of political correctness here, and this makes what we do learn palatable. The one issue I would take with the story is the attack from Nell against Amy. Part of Amy's backstory is her participation in a reality show, which Nell disdains mightily. Yet it is Nell's own strong desire to tell her story that's keeping her alive. Amy was so shrewd in other ways, I longed for her to point out her right to tell her story, even on a reality show. Which just brings it back to the point, that — while offering something like hope — this play is refreshingly unconcerned with putting a bow on life.
This article appears in Jun 15-22, 2017.