In honor of my ATKM ladies, I'm doing The Debutante Ball by Beth Henley.
The playwright, as I said, is Beth Henley. I have misplaced my copy, but I have read it more than once. To my knowledge, this play has not been on Broadway or off-Broadway, but I can tell you that is has been produced regionally. However, I do not think it is produced very often because it is not one of Henley's more famous plays like Crimes of the Heart. Obviously, all of this information is from my own memory as I have misplaced my copy and this info is not on the internet.
The plot of the play begins on the day of Teddy Parker's debutante ball. Teddy is an awkward girl who absolutely does not want to be a debutante. She has quite a few mental issues going on, and we find out that she is pregnant. Her mother, Jen was quite a beautiful socialite in Hattiesburg, but she has recently been shunned because of her questionable acquittal in her husband's murder. She has a new squeeze (her defense attorney), and is looking to make Teddy's ball her own "rebirth" in the social community. Along the way, we meet Teddy's completely crazy sister, the defense attorney's deaf niece, and the defense attorney's son who limps around on crutches. To say the least....the night is a hilarious and sad disaster. I'm not spoiling the rest...just read it.
The first interesting dramaturgical choice that I found is the absolute ambiguity of most of the characters. We really don't figure out all of the secrets of these characters until the bitter end. Henley intentionally makes us wonder what's underneath all of the characters at all time, and it certainly puts me on edge when I read it. The second choice that I find fascinating is the type of irony that Henley uses. It's a sort of dramatic irony in which we laugh because the characters don't know how f&*%ed they are. It really makes the entire show. It's a script of laughing at other people's pain.
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