A devastating, yet wildly funny tale of survival as seen through the lens of a troubling relationship between a young girl and an older man.
COSTA MESA—FEBRUARY 8, 2025
The word “pedophilia” is used only once in Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE, now playing at Costa Mesa Playhouse, but the topic of pedophilia does manage to pervade this play in a terribly creepy, powerfully poignant, and hilariously funny manner, and occasionally at the same time.
The narrative spans 20 years in the life of Li’l Bit (Stephanie Savić), an impressionable, fatherless girl who has come to trust her doting Uncle Peck (Maxfield Lund). Driving instruction is not the only way for Peck to pursue his incestuous longings; there are also secretive basement photo shoots in which the patient and ever lecherous uncle fondles and nuzzles his niece, counting down the months and days to Li’l Bit’s 18th birthday and his pitiful, final seductive assault.
HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE begins on a warm summer Americana night in 1969 — a night, our narrator Li’l Bit informs us could make a “middle-aged man with a mortgage feel like a country boy again.” That man (indeed a middle-aged fellow, who, on the surface, seems well-favored, right-minded, and considerate) is waiting behind her as she talks to us, sitting in the front seat of a Buick. The set is simple: just a few stackable office chairs surrounded by glowing screens. Joining him in the “car,” 17-year-old Li’l Bit and the older man banters and flirts and negotiates. And then Li’l Bit calls the man “Uncle Peck.” The first time she says it, your stomach drops. There is worse yet to come.
“I’m not gonna do anything….” kindly Uncle Peck promises his buxom 17-year-old niece as he undertakes her first perilous driving lesson. Huge sigh of relief. Until he adds:
“…. anything you don’t want me to do.” While assuring her that he’s been a “good boy,” he unhooks her bra and manages to get her top off.
The tension of that scene, directed with killer intensity by Peter Kreder, suddenly shoots up like a rocket. With those last, lethal words, Uncle Peck pulls off the unkindest trick of every sexual predator by turning his victim into his accomplice. He actually blames her mind — her “dirty” mind — for “making him” do the dirty thing he’s about to do to her. Her choice, her fault. And just for the record, this is no halfway enterprise; it’s a first-rate revival of a theater piece that never gets stale, not so long as there are sexual predators abroad in the land and girls with lovely minds who think they know it all, but haven’t a clue about grown men with dirty minds.
Author Paula Vogel is a genuine wordsmith, and her language here is almost indecently seductive. A list of hard liquor drinks — luscious Pink Ladies, sloe gin fizzes, daiquiris — has the same lilting cadences as a description of a warm summer night under the stars. Because Li’l Bit comes from a family of Maryland country crackers, there’s also a lot of grit on that glib tongue of hers. “In my family, folks tend to get nicknamed for their genitalia,” she tells us. In Ms. Savić’s telling style, such lines come with a wicked grin.
Peter Kreder is an artful scene director who takes a gentler touch with the often-idiosyncratic language of Vogel’s memory play. Which is actually kind of jarring, because so much of the dialogue at the family dinner table is downright raunchy — indecently so, when it comes to Li’l Bit’s majestic physical endowments. “If Li’l Bit gets any bigger,” her Grandpa cackles, “we’re gonna have ta buy her a wheelbarrow to carry in front of her.”
Uncle Peck (Maxfield Lund) is not portrayed as a demon in this play, though he has preyed on his niece by his own admission since the day she was born, telling her that he has loved her since she could fit into his hand. His “courtship” is a slow, steady process; he is willing to wait until he has convinced her that she wants what he does. Li’l Bit’s family is tainted with alcoholism and misogyny, but, unlike the rest of her family, Uncle Peck supports Li’l Bit’s dreams of attending college and takes an interest in spending time with her.
The marvel of Mr. Lund’s performance is its simplicity. His observant uncle is hyper-aware of her vulnerability — a perfect match of predator and prey. Yet, Mr. Lund manages to help us to see the internal pain his character carries: Peck isn’t evil; he too is probably a victim in a line that stretches back. (“Who did this to you?” L’il Bit wonders at one point.) Now he has urges that he desperately tries to convince himself are perfectly normal even though he knows they are not. Mr. Lund pulls no punches on his character’s warped sexuality, but somehow still manages to make the audience feel a kind of sympathy for a man who is merely a pawn in a very long game of chess.
The beauty of Stephanie Savić’s performance is its complexity. Her teenager is an emotional jumble of intelligence, innocence, awareness, awkwardness, sensitivity and brashness. Throughout the play, she plays her character in various ages from 11 to 34, and Ms. Savić has mastered the often-subtle differences among these age groups. Watch the first time “reverse gear” is mentioned: in a second, she switches from an 18-year-old girl to a 16-year-old one. It’s not a huge leap in time, but there are changes in her demeanor that are remarkable. And her crying fit when she is 11 is absolutely perfect: she captures the bewildered tears of a child with real empathy.
But the truth of her character is that she is being abused, and it is in adult L’il Bit that we see the confused pain of that. As a child, she is torn between her feelings for a beloved uncle and her awareness that what he is doing must be wrong. As an adult, able to put it all into perspective, she must cope not only with what Peck has done to her but what he has turned her into. Exuberant in the aftermath of her own seduction scene, she declares that she understands now: it’s the feeling of power one gets from being the teacher, the one with experience. There is a whole different kind of horror in her statement: she is not seeing anything at all wrong with what she has done.
Director Kreder has assembled an excellent ensemble as well to help present Vogel’s uncomfortable play. The three “Greek Chorus” actors, each of whom takes on multiple roles, are outstanding, turning in performances that brightly offset the main couple, if that word can truly be applied here. They also provide some much needed comic relief in places, e.g., the caustically hilarious grandmother of the family, played by Shelby Perlis as the Teenage Greek Chorus, who vividly likens Li’l Bit’s grandfather’s sexual behavior to that of a “bull” and accepts her husband’s view that a woman’s main purpose is to “have the table set and the bed turned down.” Ms. Perlis also plays some of Li’l Bit’s high school companions as well as Li’l Bit’s own voice in the play’s penultimate scene, which depicts the first instance of abuse by Uncle Peck.
Shelly Day, as the female Greek chorus, plays Li’l Bit’s mother, offering her misguided advice on sexuality and drinking alcohol “like a man,” Uncle Peck’s wife (who places all the blame on his incestuous relationship with Li’l Bit on Li’l Bit herself) and some of Li’l Bit’s high school friends. Eric Parmer, the male member of the chorus, plays Big Pop, the grandfather, as a sex-obsessed monster, and a host of male characters whose remarks have embedded themselves in Li’l Bit’s psyche.
HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE by Paula Vogel; Directed by Peter Kreder, Artistic Director Costa Mesa Playhouse.
STARRING: Stephanie Savić as Li’l Bit; Maxfield Lund as Uncle Peck; Eric Parmer as Male Greek Chorus; Shelly Day as Female Greek Chorus; Shelby Perlis as Teenage Greek Chorus.
PERFORMANCES: February 6th through February 23rd (originally set to open on Jan 24th); Performing Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm. $30 Adults, $28 Seniors / Students. 90 minutes with no intermission. This show deals with mature themes around sexual abuse and pedophilia. Costa Mesa Playhouse is located at 661 Hamilton Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92627. For Tickets: Phone:(949) 650-5269 or visit www.costamesaplayhouse.com/
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report
Photo Credits: Kerrin Piche Serna
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