Heidi Schreck is lucky I was not among the American Legion members judging a speech she made during her teen years at Legion halls throughout the country to earn prize money she could put towards her college education.
She would have lost to the rival that plagued her throughout that adolescent journey.
The theme of Schreck’s speech was “What the Constitution Means to Me,” and she complied with contest rules by applying the U.S. Constitution and its amendments to incidents in her own life.
The speech, as we hear it as part of Schreck’s, play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse through Sunday, October 13, smacks of juvenilia. It is the work of a smart kid who knows how to finagle an “A” and how to include remarks that dig, snidely but pointedly, at possible flaws in America’s foundational document, particularly those of omission or which reflect political leanings from the historic period in which they were written.
These digs are not necessarily unwarranted, but notice I’m, for the third time, calling them “digs” instead of criticism. I’m doing that because, as is fashionable today, they come off less as a discussion or scholarly inquiry and more as a polemic gimmick, an agenda.
These complaints about the Constitution, usually led up to with a “look what I found” or “see what I see” attitude, seep over to Schreck’s play.
Interestingly enough, they don’t completely sabotage the play, at least not at George Street.
For several reasons.
Three of them are Kate Baldwin, Nicholas Rodriguez, and Niara Beckwith. A fourth is Laiona Michelle. These are the actors and director of George Street’s bright, engaging production that forces you to admire it theatrically even if you are not one of the converted writers like Schreck must think are the sole or dominant attenders of theater and expectantly rely on to nod at agreement at their philosophical maundering instead of judging them and categorizing them as being purposefully skewed, even if worth mentioning.
Schreck can get smug, overly assured, and heavy-handed. Her arguments are not without merit, but they are like a Stephen Colbert monologue, convinced one must see their point even if it’s overstated and one among several possible interpretations.
Kate Baldwin, who plays Schreck at several ages — 15, 21, and as a mature, successful playwright in her late 40s — before spending the last quarter of the play as herself, is so charming, it doesn’t matter if Schreck is smug. You can, if inclined, reserve your counter arguments, historic explanations, or fact correction for a different time because Baldwin does not register as smug. She finds the humor in Schreck as a woman while making any anger, discontent, sarcasm, issue begging, advocacy, or, frankly, pandering an integral part of a complete character.
Baldwin can’t hide where Schreck’s script wants to lead its audience, but she can convey the intelligence, wit, sincerity, and even some loopy eccentricities that make the Heidi Schreck on stage an interesting person to watch and hear.
Even when what you makes you seethe or take your feet off the floor so your shoes don’t get soiled from the bilge.
As she’s proven multiple times, including last season in Bucks County Playhouse’s “The Bridges of Madison County,” Baldwin is an artist with dialogue and phrasing. She paces and presents Schreck’s material excellently.
As Schreck, Baldwin exudes the spirit of a bright, lively woman who was shrewd enough to finance her entire college education by placing highly in enough public speaking contests to earn sufficient funds to do so.
Baldwin’s brightness carries over to Schreck’s more committed period, when she begins to question the Constitution, whom its phraseology includes, whom it excludes, and whether it is a document for all times, specifically our time.
Baldwin, with the congenial help of Nicholas Rodriguez, keeps all buoyant no matter how partisan it gets. She also captures the pathos in some of Schreck’s personal stories, the ones that illustrate how the Constitution might affect her and others, primarily women, in ways that transcend any political squabbling and move a situation from the polemic to basic humanity.
“What the Constitution Means To Me” works best when Schreck is living a case rather than pleading one, when she confines herself to a personal experience and how she felt while enduring it rather than making a case for the inadequacies in or the abolishment of the U.S. Constitution. (More of that later, including a full disclosure.)
It’s because Kate Baldwin relates Schreck’s experience in a properly moving way. Baldwin gets and conveys every nuance of Schreck’s piece. She also holds her own as a debater.
By now you can tell, I am not a fan of the play, “What the Constitution Means To Me.” I think it’s fundamentally flawed by limiting the U.S. Constitution to a feminist point of view without carefully acknowledging how the Constitution has adapted to changing times and how fixing it is less dangerous or disruptive than scuttling it.
Laiona Michelle’s production for George Street is a different story. Everything I’ve seen from Michelle, including her riveting off-Broadway musical about Nina Simone, “Little Girl Blue,” is meticulous and entertaining throughout. Michelle knows how to mix personality with politics. Her production preserves a personal, conversational tone that never becomes preachy or overly activist.
Schreck’s progressive feminist views are there in the script, and while Baldwin and Michelle can’t help but point to them and convey Schreck’s emphasis, they keep them from being cloying. They remain opinions, firmly stated opinions, for you to consider rather than pronouncements from the mountaintop.
This is smart acting and smart direction.
“Smart” characterizes Michelle’s production. It entertains even when it might anger, as it may be designed on some level to do.
Nicholas Rodriguez, in a handful of roles, but mostly as the moderator of an American Legion contest in which Schreck is competing, matches Baldwin in charm. In some ways, Rodriguez’s portrayal is the antidote to the way Heidi Schreck regards men (as power figures; Schreck makes it clear she admires men as attractions).
Rodriguez plays an authority figure, but he plays him gently and with humor, blessedly never trying to satirize or lampoon a character who in lesser hands could be subject to such a dramatic interpretation.
I especially enjoyed Rodriguez in the last part of the play when he and Baldwin are said to represent only themselves. As Kate Baldwin is speaking in her own voice, Rodriguez, the co-star in Bucks’s “Bridges of Madison County,” looks at her with such friendship and joy. It was heartwarming.
As “What the Constitution Means to Me” progresses, it becomes less a story of a teenager who became an expert on the Constitution to win prize money and more of one about a woman who questions the Constitution and may believe, as Baldwin argues in debate, that Thomas Jefferson was right when he said it should be rewritten every generation.
Schreck makes a case for abolishing the Constitution and replacing it with a document that more openly recognizes women, indigenous people, and various categories of minorities. She also advocates for attention to climate change and abortion.
As a playwright, Schreck does more than advocate. Her script includes an after-play debate between the actress playing Schreck (Baldwin) and a student debater.
At George Street, this codicil was among the most exciting parts of the performance. Rodriguez flips a coin. Tails, Kate Baldwin chooses between arguing to abolish or keep the Constitution. Heads, the teen debater selects.
The toss was “heads,” and the teenage debater, the piercingly brilliant Niara Beckwith, age 15, elected to defend keeping the Constitution.
The debate was done by strict rules — networks featuring matches between political candidates, take note. Baldwin made some keen points for the case to abolish, including quoting Jefferson. (I would have countered with Benjamin Franklin.)
Beckwith was sublime. Her reasoning, her classic manner of refuting Baldwin, then making her points, and her clear, cogent arguments were exhilarating.
Beckwith is one articulate young woman whose command of history and sense of logic could be a lesson to Heidi Schreck.
At the end of the debate, one member of the audience is chosen to be the sole judge of with side prevails.
Not knowing who I am or that I’m reviewing, Beckwith asked me to be that judge.
I accepted, naturally giving full disclosure about why I was at George Street that night.
By all standards, Beckwith easily won the day, and “Keep” was the deserved outcome of that debate. It made no difference that I firmly support keeping and amending the current Constitution than letting the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Maxine Waters get their mitts on it.
I can cavil with some of Schreck’s history, but my main objection to her play as a play is the self-righteous way she expected agreement and that she advocated as if her point of view was the only possible one.
Shoko Kambara’s Legion-post set was remarkably authentic and perfect for the overall play. Nilamar Felder’s costumes were right for each character and jaunty for Rodriguez’s. Christopher Barry helped set needed tones in his light design. Just that we could clearly hear tapes Baldwin’s Schreck cued is enough to laud Kwamina Biney’s sound design.
What the Constitution Means to Me, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. Through Sunday, October 13. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. $25 to $80. www.georgestreetplayhouse.org or 732-246-7717.
