Guilt (A Love Story): Grey Gardens gorgeous

16 Feb 2024 - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

With a whoop of exuberance, Diane Flacks (Fall on Your Knees, Freda and Jem's Best of the Week) bounds into the audience on her way to the stage. She bears a tray of tequila shots which she dispenses, being careful to keep one for herself. She encourages the audience members lucky enough to get a shot to join her in knocking it back. She then, in her best Borscht Belt stylings, fires off a few one-liners. "My drinking is not a problem, it's a solution." "My drinking is not a cry for help, it's a cry for Sangria." It turns out she is not here to wring laughs out of joining AA (there are many, many references to suburban civilized wine drinking sprinkled throughout the monologue that follows) but rather to talk about guilt. Hence the title, Guilt (A Love Story). Flacks tells us that "Guilt is the Jewish default setting" and to prove it, morphs into her grandmother who unleashes a torrent of guilt using Auschwitz as a comic cudgel. We laugh uncomfortably, no matter how well delivered, the gag is dated and questionable in the current cultural climate. Flacks quickly moves on to impersonating Sigmund Freud, complete with mimed cigar, who propounds on the rapacious nature of vaginas in general and lesbians in particular. While this is also dated, at least we all agree and endorse it.

Flacks is as physically restless as she is verbally. Clad in a loose-fitting, almost oversized, post-Annie Hall ensemble, she dances, mugs, and illustrates her points emphatically. She moves on to the joys of motherhood, revelling in being what is colloquially known as a 'helicopter Karen.' She reveals her alias identity complete with a super power of eight octopus arms to protect her kids and to get things done. Her arms flail enough to almost believe there are eight. Threaded throughout, both her grandmother and Freud occasionally reappear, is the nugget of knowledge that she and her wife have broken up. At Flacks' instigation. This is where the guilt of the title comes in. I think. She also explains, with an eerily glowing prop plastic brain, how guilt is created by neurons or synapses, through a disconnect or conflict between two parts of the brain. There is a very funny bit about pronouns and identification, some one-liners that land with precision, and a deliciously dark toss away line linking #MeToo and anti-Semitism. 

She philosophizes on how creating a family of any sort involves building on or reacting to the heterosexual nuclear family paradigm. Her conclusion is that therefore the foundations will always be unsound, but the resulting structure can be "Grey Gardens gorgeous." It is a powerful and evocative bit that resonates, and is referenced, throughout the rest of the evening. We learn a little about her new hard-drinking younger new love interest, and the painful process of separation. There are numerous mentions of all-inclusive beach vacations and our eyes are drawn to the sand ringing the stage. Sand studded with empty wine bottles. And a discarded microphone and stand which is never used. Has Flacks' guilt, and drinking, caused her to abandon her comedy? Before it all has a chance to gel or connect, Flacks takes a hard turn into very dark material that fans will recognize as a pivotal experience mined in a previous work Waiting Roon. It might very well be a whiplash too far.

Flacks is an incredibly gregarious performer and we are in her confidence from the first shot of tequila (whether we received one or not). The evening progresses as if we were sipping, maybe chugging, wine while a particularly witty close friend regales us with her latest domestic troubles. It is all very amiable and amusing with occasional flashes of insight. However, personally, the references to yoga, housing, and finally the cribbing of a Woody Allen—who had been dissed in the #MeToo/Jewish joke—one-liner about all you can eat buffets at a resort made me gasp 'Oy vey."  Perhaps the marital split isn't what Flacks is really feeling guilty about. The Allen reference is an apt one. Like his work, Flacks is mining a specifically upper middle class milieu and it clashes with the fiery sexy queer actress/comedian she is. Throughout the show, Flacks reaches for, carries and fondles a tall water bottle set at the back of the stage. But she never drinks. Her guilt is not allowing her to? Self-denial? The final image of Guilt (A Love Story) resolves the dilemma theatrically, but not emotionally. Though Guilt (A Love Story) is Grey Gardens gorgeous, the foundation is unsound.