A well-meaning work regarding the serious issue of eating disorders, Rinse, Repeat proves to be one of those medicinal plays that presumably is good for you to swallow.
Produced by John Gould Rubin and premiering on Wednesday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Rinse, Repeat has been written by Domenica Feraud, who also portrays the central figure of her contemporary drama.
The story concerns Rachel (Feraud), a Yale student who returns to her suburban Connecticut home after spending four months in a clinic where she was treated for a severe case of anorexia. Rachel is making a trial visit to determine whether she can resume normal existence. Her well-off parents, Peter (Michael Hayden) and Joan (Florencia Lozano), have been charged by Brenda (Portia), Rachel’s case worker, to be vigilant regarding her meals and behavior.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★ review here.]
The 100-minute play proceeds to relate in brief scenes an increasingly troubled weekend.
It soon is obvious that Rachel is fragile and her negligent parents are not being supportive. Joan is an overachieving attorney who pressures Rachel to apply to law schools right away. A tarnished golden boy, Peter may be somewhat sensitive regarding his daughter but remains a self-absorbed individual. Intimations of adulteries and other domestic troubles simmer. Rachel’s brother Brody (Jake Ryan Lozano) is a mostly undemonstrative high school jock.
A glum soul with a poor image of herself, the unsupervised Rachel quickly returns to dangerous eating habits. Bagels, French toast, and chicken salad are secretly stashed in the trash. A pumpkin pie is binge consumed.
Joan, a brittle perfectionist who ignores Rachel’s hopes to study creative writing—one of Rachel’s poems, regarding a knife, hints how she even could be suicidal—is revealed later to harbor an eating disorder of her own. When Brenda subsequently challenges how well Rachel is being safeguarded, the parents prevaricate about their daughter’s condition.
Although Rinse, Repeat considers a worthy topic, the drama scarcely flickers to life.
Feraud reportedly has suffered eating disorders. Possibly the author was too close to the issue to dramatize the story with the detachment needed to manipulate the material effectively. A curiously enervated quality to the dialogue suggests the play may have been rewritten over numerous drafts and lost some of its vitality in the process. Rachel, supposedly a smart and creative young woman, is reduced here to a woeful, rather helpless creature.
Kate Hopkins, the director, delivers a well-grounded production. Set designer Brittany Vasta provides a perfectly antiseptic kitchen done in cream and touches of orange that appropriately looks as if a decent meal hasn’t been cooked there in years. At the center of the room, part of the kitchen island at times doubles as the location for Rachel’s bed. During the play’s most strikingly staged passage, Joan and Peter are seen arguing literally over Rachel’s body.
Costume designer Nicole Slaven dresses the characters strategically. The unhappy Rachel wears baggy, mismatched clothes while her athletic parents are attired trimly and Brody affects quirky sportswear. Ien Denio’s sound design features a periodically scratching noise that possibly indicates Rachel’s distracted mental state.
Perhaps the sad-eyed Feraud should have allowed a more dynamic actor to portray Rachel, but the rest of the performers capably depict the other characters.
Inserted into the play’s program, a flyer from the National Eating Disorders Association advises readers how to initiate supportive conversations with loved ones suspected of struggling with food or body image issues. In contrast, Rinse, Repeat offers an example of how not to help people with such troubles.
