The Beebo Brinker Chronicles

Written by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman

Based on novels by Ann Bannon

Directed by Leigh Silverman

The Fourth Street Theatre

83 East 4th Street

212-352-3101

 

Review by Gena Hymowech

 

Girl loves girl. Girl loses girl to a guy. Girls reunite, erupting in enough anger and passion to fuel multiple seasons of “The L Word.” This, in a nutshell, is the plot of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, based on Ann Bannon’s popular pulp novels of the 1950s and ‘60s. The show begins as college sweethearts Laura and Beth (Marin Ireland and Autumn Dornfeld) are saying goodbye. Beth is opting for the comforts of marriage and family in California, while Laura is heading to New York for a more uncertain future.

 

Hep Cats: Bill Dawes, David Greenspan, Marin Ireland, Carolyn Baeumler and Anna Foss Wilson revive 1950s pulp in The Beebo Brinker Chronicles.

 

Once she’s in the big city, Laura encounters relationship drama with the straight but flirtatious Marcie (Carolyn Baeumler) and Beebo (Anna Foss Wilson), the local butch Lothario. Beth, meanwhile, discovers she’s not cut out for marriage or motherhood and leaves both to find Laura. But will Laura still want her?

 

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles boasts a highly talented cast of actors, who move beyond the camp factor to show real emotion. David Greenspan is exceptionally impressive as the wonderfully jaded Jack Mann. The hair, makeup and wig team of J. Jared Janas and Rob Greene also deserves kudos. With limited resources, the team manages to believably pull off the look of 1952 to 1960.

 

But pulp fiction, with all its soap opera insanity, is not exactly ideal source material for a serious play. (And a serious play is what The Beebo Brinker Chronicles is trying to be, despite its occasional dips into comedy.) Because writers Ryan and Chapman have chosen to preserve the overdramatic feel of the novels, they frequently strain believability. Still, it’s not easy boiling down three novels into one 90-minute play, yet Ryan and Chapman have created a riveting production that shows just how difficult life as a lesbian once was — whether you were a swinging single or a married mother.