Boy Gets Girl | Eclipse Theatre Company
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Playwright Rebecca Gilman has made a lot of missteps in recent work, venturing into cartoonish class politics in 2001’s Blue Surge and 2005’s Dollhouse. But her Boy Gets Girl–a hit at the Goodman in 2000–shows off her strengths: acidic observational humor based on the human urge for self-aggrandizement and the deft creation of a pervasive sense of menace. A smarter, more insightful version of the stalker movies clogging the Lifetime channel, Boy Gets Girl focuses on the conflict between cultural assumptions about romance and how they play out in real life. An outstanding cast, directed by Steve Scott for Eclipse Theatre’s last production in its all-Gilman season, keeps the play popping and simmering.
But in contrast to Gilman’s more recent scripts, neatly boxed along familiar lines of class identity, Boy Gets Girl exhibits a welcome messiness and uncertainty. Theresa’s chance encounter with Tony undoes every assumption she has about herself and everything she’s worked for. And by depicting the dark side of romantic comedies, with their aggressively amorous dashing strangers, Gilman skillfully upends the desire to live according to cherished cultural cliches.
