Hurricane Diane - Huntington Theatre Company

Photo credit: T Charles Erikson. Pictured: Carol Fleischer and Rami Margron

Hurricane Diane – Huntington Theatre Company

Review by James Wilkinson

Hurricane Diane is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company. Written by Madeleine George. Directed by Jenny Koons. Scenic Design: Stephanie Osin Cohen. Costume Design: Hahnji Jang. Lighting Design: Jen Schriever. Original Music and Sound Design: Ben Scheff.

Before diving in, I wanted to say that this is my first review, my first piece of consumed in-person theatre since March of 2020. It’s been a full eighteen months…and damn does it feel good to be back…

At the press opening for Hurricane Diane, the Huntington’s Managing Director used the curtain speech for a moment of reflection on what’s been lost in the last year and a half, a time when theater practitioners have been unable to ply their craft. A city without an arts scene, he noted, without the ability for people to gather together and share an experience, is a city decimated. It’s a good line, (and true), one that ignited a round of applause from an audience who appeared keen to accept anything that came their way. It almost seemed to be our duty to love what came next. So let this be my official apology for being neglectful in my responsibilities, then.

Hurricane Diane by Madeline George has a fantastic, juicy comic premise. The Greek God Dionysus arrives on the modern-day scene, posing as a landscaper, in order to seduce a group of New Jersey housewives. Fun, right? The problem comes about halfway through when that ugly feeling creeps in that the play doesn’t know what to do with that premise, or at least that it can’t make a decision about what it wants to do. We’re ostensibly watching a show that’s trying to grapple with climate change, that’s the charge laid out for us in the opening monologue by Dionysus, AKA Diane, (Rami Margron, more on them in a second). The seductions we’ll be watching are part of her plan to gather worshippers and thus regain her godly powers on Earth. From there she’ll be able to bring back balance to the natural world, fixing the mess we humans have made of the planet.

But Diane as a character doesn’t really get filled in. She’s more symbol than person. The play’s focus is more on sketching out the circumstances of the four women that are the objects of Diane’s apparent affection. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is where the play starts to lose focus. It’s no longer about those larger environmental issues but about these women. Carol, Beth, Pam and Renee (Carol Fleischer, Marianna Bassham, Jennifer Bubriski and Kris Sidberry), are the kind of upper-class, suburban wives that everyone can picture, (and perhaps, unfairly dismiss). They’re a group of friends living in houses larger and more decadent than they need to be, meeting regularly for wine or coffee while they gossip about the one in the group who’s not there at the moment. It’s them we follow while Diane lurks in the background, cocky as anything about her ability to make these women fall in line.

What do we make of these women? George’s script seems to be sending mixed messages. When Diane rolls into town, offering to rip out the group’s manicured gardens so that the natural world can flood in, the offer is framed as something to be happily embraced. But when the quartet discuss Diane later on, the script appears to prime the women as objects of satire. Their interest in Diane’s gardening ideas is little more than latching onto a trend rather than a genuine interest in restoring the environment. Are we meant to be invested in their decisions when it’s portrayed as something so shallow? Other areas of their lives get a similar satirical prodding. Renee gets a running gag about how often she brings up her college lesbianism in an effort of hip-ness. Pam’s sexual dealings with her husband get a laugh. Carol gets a comic moment describing her HGTV magazine subscription in sexual terms. So, are these women with their upper-middle class and faux progressive values examples of the problem? Well, no. At least, not the ones who are willing to stop worrying and love Diane. If only that’s all it took. It’s a muddled metaphor that gets murkier late in the show when one of our characters resists Diane’s offer to join the suburban bacchanal currently happening in the cul-de-sac. The choice is depicted as emblematic of resistance to fix climate change. But is that really the problem we’re dealing with when it comes to global warming? That not enough of us are willing to throw up our hands and just join the orgy outdoors? (Am I overly optimistic in my belief that if engaging in sex cults were the solution, global warming would have been solved several times over by now?)

And for a play with such a naughty premise, one that’s happy to openly embrace queerness, the script is surprisingly chaste. Margron plays Diane with a mischievous glint in their eye that shows they’re ready to run with the bawdier potential of the character, but the script never really provides the opportunity to let loose. The seduction scenes have very little in the way of the charge needed to pull our attention and in fact, (much like the classic sitcoms where spouses sleep in beds six feet apart), we often cut to black at the first kiss. Apparently, we can’t risk going any further. Some of this is surely by design. George is playing with a sitcom aesthetic to reach a mass audience, but it comes at the expense of giving the play more personality. Hurricane Diane is so well-behaved, so completely unoffensive, that when it cautiously dips its toe into a moment of weirdness late in the play, all it does is give you ideas of the much weirder play that it could have been.  

Across the board, the acting team does what’s required of them and they’re good enough to make you wish that the script asked for a little more. We get the circumstances of these people’s lives but the characterizations don’t go much deeper than that. Sidberry as Renee has a notable moment talking about rising in her chosen industry as a woman of color. It’s lovely little moment that plugs into many of the conversations we’re having right now in the wider culture, but it’s not explored in a way that connects with the rest of the material. Director Jenny Koons runs into a similar issue. The script just doesn’t give her enough toys to play with until a certain moment late in the play when she can finally flex her wings a bit. At that point it’s too late. The sense of dread that we’re clearly meant to feel at the end of the piece doesn’t land with the impact that it should.

Hurricane Diane offers surface pleasures, but that’s as far as it goes when it wants to reach for so much more. Perhaps, as the first in-person, in-house theater production in Boston, it’s best thought of as an appetizer for what’s to come. Deprived of theater for so long, the audience around me on press night was happy to gobble up the light comedic mood that the piece offers. I can’t blame them for their eagerness but it’s worth pointing out that they’re stuffing themselves on canapés.

Hurricane Diane is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company. It plays at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts August 27-September 26, 2021. For tickets and more information, visit: www.huntingtontheatre.org

Please note that attending requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test. As well a face mask being worn throughout the performance. For more information about the policy, please refer to the Huntington’s website.

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