In an interview conducted last month, playwright Winnie Holzman said that her play, “Choice,” at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre through June 2, was conceived by a desire to write about abortion but with an original take.
She succeeded.
Though any current play that makes abortion a central element can’t help but be somewhat political, Holzman cannily weaves those politics into the experiences and dialogue of her characters. She humanizes the subject by showing how it affects three woman, now middle-aged and one unseen, who aborted fetuses or embryos in pregnancies that occurred in their early adulthood. She adds intrigue by creating, perhaps imagining, a situation that affects a woman’s attitude toward the being that was terminated.
This all sounds heady, serious, and controversial. On one level it is. “Choice” deserves some examination to delineate the several parts that lead to its sum. Holzman, known best for writing the book of the musical “Wicked,” is too shrewd and too motivated in another direction to allow “Choice” to become a polemic.
In fact, it’s hilarious, filled with quirky, neurotic characters — Writers and journalists, need I say more? — who don’t so much crack jokes as spout comments and reactions that are intrinsically funny. Holzman’s art is in making a flashpoint issue incidental. Abortion is a part of three women’s lives, each regarding it differently. Without skirting the practice, or its status as a political powderkeg, Holzman puts each individual’s option for abortion in perspective. A decision they made 25 years earlier remains part of their lives, but their lives go on. Protests, stances, rulings, legislation, controversy, division, etc., are part of those lives, but the choice, when taken, was personal.
Holzman makes a point to have her focal character, a journalist, Zipporah Zunder (Ilana Levine), say directly that she does not regret having an abortion. It was the right thing for her to do at the time, as depicted in a flashback scene, one that invites agreement with her choice. She has, however, because of a phenomenon Holzman invents for “Choice,” come to wonder what might have become of her embryo had it come to term and been born.
That phenomenon, which Holzman dubs CLAF, an acronym for Children Lost and Found, becomes the crux of “Choice.” Though the play swirls and covers a lot of ground as Zippy’s family, friends, interview subjects, and sudden acquaintances figure into it, often in ways that have nothing to do with abortion, fascination emerges when Holzman posits that aborted fetuses, or their souls, may last and even materialize. The magazine story Zippy embarks on as the play opens is about a famous movie producer who believes she has been reunited with her “CLAF.” The magazine editors are only interested in the story because Zippy has the producer’s consent to meet her together with the “CLAF.”
In Holzman’s deft hands, nothing about CLAF seems weird or even otherworldly. Holzman presents it as a possibility, one Zippy expects to debunk. The audience accepts it as a possibility and becomes curious.
That curiosity is satisfied, but since I’ve already set off a dozen spoiler alarms, I’m going to leave this revelation to people who see “Choice,” which is decidedly worth the visit.
Not only because of the dominant subject, abortion, or because of the supernatural, almost romantically supernatural, advent of CLAF, but because “Choice” is above all is fun to watch.
It’s entertaining. Holzman has created a cadre of smart, funny characters with interesting perspectives based on interesting experiences and encounters. Most of the characters are writers who have insights and spout bon mots with the speed of an Acela.
The first scene, in the kitchen Zippy shares with her husband, Clark (Dakin Matthews), and daughter, Zoe (Caitlin Kinnunen), sharp one-liners abound, and character traits, such as Clark’s deafness, Zoe’s co-dependence, and Zippy’s penchant for interrupting and making a point humorously, intentionally or not, come clear. The sequence, which includes Zippy’s lifelong best friend, Erica (Kate A. Mulligan) and her beau du jour, Mark (Barzin Akhavan), sets up Holzman’s entire play, but it does so in a breezy fashion that immediately dispels any fear “Choice” might be an evening of advocacy, diatribe, and cant.
In addition to establishing Holzman’s various characters, the first scenes show their relationships and set up dynamics that will keep later scenes and their development clear.
Entertainment is the key to Holzman’s success. She knows how to let characters make their case, tell their truth (or dodge from the truth), in a natural and funny way. Even when Zippy and Erica discuss abortion directly, their candor, wit, sincerity, and logic preclude the situation becoming incendiary or threatening to the audience’s sensibility. Holzman doesn’t preach. She created characters who are adept at explaining. Not rationalizing, explaining. Or simply sharing their points of view.
In general, “Choice” sails smoothly from one scene to the next. Among Holzman’s talents is fitting in important sequences without risking the flow of the play. Caitlin Kinnunen plays a triple role, abandoning Zoe for a couple of scenes in which she not only transforms from a Russian body waxer to a 20th century clinic nurse but miraculously changes her scrubs along with her accent.
Speaking of shrewd, deft, and canny, Sarah Rasmussen directs with so light a touch, you believe the characters are going about their lives without being staged.
Rasmussen’s work is fluid. Best of all, she allows Holzman’s characters to evolve without seeming to impose anything specific on them. I know from talking to Holzman how closely she and Rasmussen worked to make “Choice” if not a world premiere, then a first exposure of this version. The collaboration shows. It goes beyond collaboration to symbiosis.
Though “Choice” moves well, there is one 10-minute passage in the last quarter of the play that becomes a bit muddy and doesn’t retain the energy of what comes before or after it. The lull is almost inconsequential. It comes at a time of transition and prior to a revelation and on opening night needed to find its gear.
The cast of “Choice” is uniformly superb. Ilana Levine is the quintessential writer, thinker, and mother. Full of ticks and quirks, Levine makes Zippy someone with energy and excitement about the world. You see Zippy’s intense concern for everything about her. You also see a woman who doesn’t always know what she wants or what she fears but proceeds honestly and is so much the reporter she will work to find out what she needs to know and do.
Dakin Matthews is delightfully droll as Zippy’s husband, who looks at situations more ironically and more immediately head-on than she does. Matthews epitomizes an actor who can toss off a funny line without showing the least bit of self-consciousness about it.
Jake Cannavale, as Zippy’s alleged research assistant, Hunter, is a whirlwind whose ability to adapt, transform, and stay in good graces when he has violated trust, contrasts well with Levine. Cannavale shows how Hunter’s resourcefulness can be beneficial while also sneaky.
Kate A. Mulligan does a fine job as the character who can ground Zippy but has a strong personality of her own. Erica prefers her past experiences to remain past and her future romantic if she can manage it.
Barzin Akhavan finds the oddity in two separate characters named Mark, one who wants to do anything to help, the other distant and eager to avoid the difficult. Caitlin Kinnunan is bright as Zoe and does well as the waxer and the nurse (although I might lighten the waxer’s Russian accent).
Andrew Boyce’s handy multi-level revolving set captures every room and setting dead-on. Raquel Adorno’s costumes make sense for each character, although some of Zippy’s outfits border on the eccentric. Masha Tsimring’s lighting adds markedly to scenes in which Zippy is apprehensive.
Choice, Berlind Theatre of McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton. Through Sunday, June 2. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. $25 to $60. www.mccarter.org or 609-258-2787.
