Well-directed ‘Drive’ has all the right elements

Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “How I Learned to Drive” has been produced with elaborate sets, colorful backdrops and real cars on the stage. But, when all other elements are in place, it’s fairly amazing what can be done on a bare stage with four chairs, two tables and a bed.

Astutely directed by Joe Hynes for Ragtag Entertainment, the production now playing at the Onyx Theatre has all the right elements. A talented cast brings out the pathos without being overly melodramatic, which is exactly what this script needs to succeed.

Brenna Folger plays Li’l Bit, the main character and narrator, who is molested at a young age. Folger has that fresh look and innocent air about her. She brings the right sense of confusion to the part even as she slips forward and backward in time spanning some 26 years. Her angst over the love, hatred and ultimate regret and sorrow she experiences is perfectly wrought. Vogel’s script doesn’t supply transitions in dialogue, yet moving from scene to scene, Folger properly projects them to us in body language.

Glenn Heath as Peck, the uncle who victimized Li’l Bit, is a revelation. Heath carries Uncle Peck with dignity and poise, with the subdued sense of underlying smarminess of a fully realized character. His ability to humanize the role to such perfection enables us to like him and hate him at the same time. We see his soft side, the part that longs for his niece even as he tries to control the urges. When Li’l Bit finally puts a stop to things, Heath projects the pain of rejection and unspoken apology so well we almost feel sorry for him.

The remaining members of the cast play a variety of characters with varying degrees of success.

Caitlin Shea brings us a wonderful, long-suffering Aunt Mary, determined to ride out her husband’s indiscretions. We want to slap her and tell her to wake up. Yet Shea is able to make us understand why she enables. She also delivers Li’l Bit’s mother in spades. In multipart scenes titled “A Mother’s Guide,” the humor comes across with a seriocomic mixture that sucks us right in. We’re able to see she’s trying her best to educate and warn her daughter even as she’s seemingly oblivious to what is right under her nose.

Anthony Meyer and Memory McAllister play Big Papa and Grandma a bit too over-the-top. Though backwoods and backward in their sense of propriety, the mannerisms and dialect they bring to the characters are so spot-on that the boisterousness they use diminishes the level of believability.

But, when McAllister shows up as Young Li’l Bit, her quiet innocence in tone and subtle expressions play perfectly into the atmosphere of fear, curiosity and intrinsic morality.

Tenuously approaching Li’l Bit at a school dance, or as a waiter knowingly approaching Uncle Peck and his “date,” Meyer shines. Each character is complete in movement and speech.

Jake Copenhaver’s lighting design contains some dark spots downstage, places where actors walk through shadows. What we initially believe to be poor lighting turns out to be a marvelous addition to the atmosphere, a metaphor for the mixed emotions flowing through characters.

Learning to drive can be tough, but this class should be a requirement.