Yellow Pages
The fine line between overzealous and deranged parents blurs quickly in “Bright Ideas,” a black farce presented by Anacortes High School drama students that opens Thursday at Brodniak Hall.
“It’s a dark comedy about families and the lengths people will go to to make sure their kids are at the top of the heap,” said director Scott Burnett.
Genevra and Joshua Bradley, played in rehearsal by Haley Davidson and Gabe Hill, seem normal enough at first, even though they reveal that they rushed straight from the delivery room to the best preschool in the city to get their son Mac onto the waiting list. Almost four years later, Mac is now first on the waiting list.
The Bradleys talk to other parents who brag about bribing their kids’ way into Bright Ideas. They extol the school’s stellar quality — virtually all Bright Ideas students go on to graduate from Ivy League schools and lead happy, wildly successful lives. Then these parents terrify the Bradleys with a deadline — Mac will be completely formed, his entire future locked, by the time he reaches his rapidly approaching fourth birthday.
Clearly, Mac is doomed to become a miserable loser unless he gets into the school. So, what lengths will these parents go to, when his whole life is at stake? They can’t afford a bribe, and, Joshua muses, it’s not as if they could kill Genevra’s ambitious co-worker Denise, a single mom, whose son would have to leave Bright Ideas and live with his father.
Genevra is willing to discuss the idea — only to discredit it, of course. She reconsiders her refusal while reading Mac a grisly bedtime story about a lioness who proves her love for her cub by clawing and chewing her way through any obstacle to its happiness.
Boundaries come crashing down as Genevra cooks up a poisonous pesto. Unleashed like Lady Macbeth (see how many references you can find to The Scottish Play), she does whatever it takes to get her way, and finds there are psychic repercussions.
The style of the play is closer to commedia dell’arte than realism.
“It takes emotions and situations and injects them with steroids,” Burnett said. “It’s a farce in the sense that it’s overblown.”
The play has few big laughs, but a lot of moments when viewers will smile and nod in recognition of over-the-top parents they have known.
“We have all experience in our life with parents — other parents, of course — acting inappropriately at athletic events, and we have all seen parents who will do anything for their child,” Burnett said.
Children never appear on stage in “Bright Ideas.” Parents and teachers simply call out commands to invisible kids on an offstage playground.
While this device seems odd at first, it sharpens the play’s focus. Cute little tykes — or rotten little brats — would distract from the point of the play: Everything these adults do, every rationalized action they take, is for themselves, not the kids.
“This play asks several important questions,” Burnett said. “What would we do for our child? Are there any boundaries we would not cross? Do we act out of love for our child, or out of self interest and an unhealthy desire to live our lives through our children?”
“Bright Ideas” has no answers.
“But it certainly does make you wonder,” he said.
