Even if you’re someone with decades of theatergoing experience, you can probably count on one hand the number of eating disorder–themed dramas you’ve seen. I’ll start. I’ve seen one: Domenica Feraud’s Rinse, Repeat, which just opened off-Broadway.
Of course there have been scores of made-for-TV movies covering the subject. (Who can forget 1994’s For the Love of Nancy, featuring Growing Pains star Tracey Gold? A male Variety reviewer oh-so-sensitively described it as “presented vividly enough to send any viewer out to raid the fridge.”) But playwrights largely remain loathe to tackle the topic.
So kudos to Feraud—who also plays protagonist Rachel, a 21-year-old recovering anorexic—for trying to, as she says in her playwright’s note, “create a piece of theatre as layered and nuanced as the subject at hand: one that won’t easily be dismissed, the way this illness has been for way too long.”
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
But that’s a tall order, especially for a 90-minute five-character play. Thankfully Feraud largely steers clear of clichés: The only one she buys into—Rachel stripping naked when she steps on the scale, removing every last bit of clothing down to her hair tie—elicits a head-shaking universal moment of recognition.
Not surprisingly, the entire play is set mostly in a kitchen—which allows us to focus on not only how Rachel eats, but also on how her father, Peter (Michael Hayden), eats, on how her brother, Brody (Jake Ryan Lozano), eats, and on how her mother, Joan (Florencia Lozano), doesn’t eat. Eventually, using her therapist (Portia) as a buffer, Rachel confronts Joan about her coffee and Splenda-topped fat-free Greek yogurt diet: “If I ate the way you do, would that be ok?” Joan’s clueless reply: “It would be great!” Well, it’s no wonder Rachel has body-image issues.
Rinse, Repeat works a little too hard to draw those parallels between Joan and Rachel—everything is explained in the final scene, in case you missed anything!—and to distinguish Rachel from her mom. Driven workaholic lawyer Joan wants her brilliant daughter to follow in her footsteps, but that pesky eating disorder threw everything off track. Naturally, Joan thought Rachel would keep cramming for the LSAT while she was in recovery at Renley (a stand-in for Manhattan’s Renfrew Center, perhaps?); but Rachel had other ideas: mainly, creative writing—which manifests itself in dense, symbolism-heavy poems that we hear between scenes, courtesy of the Brody character. “I recently had an epiphany./ How to become my own favorite object./ Sharp./ And beautiful./ How to consist of edges./ Edges barbed enough to hurt.”
All those overwrought metaphors ultimately undercut—pun not intended!—Rinse, Repeat’s truer moments, such as when Rachel scrutinizes four essentially identical bagels in search of the smallest one, which she then tops with a barely-there scrape butter, or the way she uses a paper towel to wipe offensive oily salad dressing from an individual lettuce leaf. There’s one thing Rachel tells Joan that I hope sticks with people who see, or even don’t see, the show: “You don’t have to be an anorexic to have a problem. To have your entire life revolve around food.”
Rinse, Repeat opened July 31, 2019, at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Tickets and information: rinserepeatplay.com
