A meaningful and frequently funny comedy, Hurricane Diane is a perfect conversation piece for these fraught times of climate change and the Green New Deal.
It regards our damaged ecosystem, it’s about privileged white women dissatisfied with their well-off, middle-aged existence, and it invokes a higher power to miraculously fix this mess everybody’s in, whether they know it or not.
Opening on Sunday in a witty production at New York Theatre Workshop, Hurricane Diane is the latest play from Madeline George, the imaginative author of The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence and Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, among other uncommon plays.
Not to trivialize Hurricane Diane, but let’s summarize George’s 90-minute story as more or less what happens when the god Dionysus meets Desperate Housewives of New Jersey.
Identifying herself to the audience as the god of agriculture, wine, and song, Dionysus plots a comeback to stop humanity from despoiling the earth. In order to spark an ecstatic Dionysian cult that will save civilization from itself, the god needs to win at least four acolytes.
That’s why Dionysus materializes in a swanky suburb of New Jersey in the comely mortal disguise of Diane (Becca Blackwell), a masculine-of-center woman in the landscaping business. Exchanging a toga for cargo shorts, work boots, and flannels, Diane goes about seducing four neighboring ladies into transforming their backyards into lush primeval paradises—for starters.
Beth (Kate Wetherhead), a wavering, waif-like creature, soon succumbs. Renee (Michelle Beck), a dabbler in lesbian love in her college years, now an HGTV Magazine editor given to wearing flowing outfits, is intrigued by Diane’s ruddy charms. Proving more resistant is Pam (a hilarious Danielle Skraastad), a staccato Italian-American firecracker in animal prints. Then there is Carol (Mia Barron), a chipper yet uptight soul whose unyielding demand for a wrought iron accent bench upon a perfect lawn masks a surprisingly malevolent spirit at odds with Diane’s divine intents.
Eventually, as a superstorm blows up the coast, women rapturously dance and chant in barbaric rites as the play unexpectedly veers into darkness and desolation.
Leigh Silverman, the director, expertly guides the comedy through its gradual progression from gossipy exchanges over glasses of wine to its mystical outcome.
Although the play’s climax and resolution seem somewhat hasty—especially regarding Dionysus/Diane’s abrupt final actions—the stormy atmospherics conjured up by Barbara Samuels (lighting) and Bray Poor (sound) effectively punctuate the tempest. Set designer Rachel Hauck positions a sunny yellow-and-white kitchen within somber surroundings meant to serve the story’s transcendental nature.
If Hurricane Diane does not manage to fully express its cautionary message, this smart play, which is skillfully performed and produced, is likely to both amuse and stimulate audiences.
Hurricane Diane opened February 24, 2019, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through March 10. Tickets and information: nytw.org
