HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE by Wag the Dog Theatre

“I have loved you every day since the day you were born…”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 25 June 2019

American playwright Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive first premiered Off-Broadway in 1997, and it won her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998. Watching Wag the Dog’s production of the play, this reviewer understands why it’s such a powerful work. While distinctly American in its cultural references and setting, the play’s explicit portrayal of sexual abuse, pedophilia and incestuous behaviour still retains its unique ability to discomfit any audience.

The story follows a non-linear narrative, with Li’l Bit (Victoria Mintey) recounting various episodes from her childhood. She grapples with her sexually abusive relationship with her Uncle Peck all through her adolescent years, as well a toxic family culture surrounding discussions of the female body and sexuality. Uncle Peck is the only one in the family who supports Li’l Bit’s dreams of college. He teaches her how to drive. But he is also an unrepentant and progressively delusional pedophile.

One must give Sean Worrall credit for his committed performance of this man, who is in equal parts pitiful and revolting. He is a plague upon himself and the young child whom he grooms in warped perceptions of female beauty, desirability, and the freedom to love and be loved. Some of the most repulsive exchanges take place when he offers words of affection that actually come from a place of twisted obsession: “Li’l Bit, I love you… I have loved you every day since the day you were born.” Can there be anything more horrifying than the truth?

In Wag the Dog Theatre’s staging of the play, it is truth and transparency itself that terrifies, with partially obscured faces speaking from behind translucent screens. These voices, which belong to Li’l Bit’s other family members, provide a commentary and reveal secrets that she is blissfully unaware of as she plays out her memories on stage. The figure of the young girl is consistently rendered vulnerable by her lack of access to information, entrenching her in the position of prey.

Susie Penrice Tyrie, who plays various Greek-chorus-like characters with great aplomb, issues memorable one-liners in the most droll of voices. At one point, she delivers with judgey pursed lips and a hoity-toity tone that “a wet woman is still more conspicuous than a drunk woman”. The audience chuckles, but we know this caricature of the older woman in a young girl’s life is a reminder of how ignorance and closed-mindedness are perpetuated within a family, generation after generation.

This also makes the dripping malice of Li’l Bit’s Aunt Mary, whom Tyrie portrays later on, land with greater force. It is a reminder that the greatest damage is often done to us by those who sit close by and speak with affection — who claim that they love us.

This is a story about secrets, about the demons that burn us up and hurt those around us. But it is also about the catharsis of articulating and exorcising the memories that fester within, and then, like Li’l Bit, flooring the gas pedal, and learning to drive into a new and better life.