All the Men Who've Frightened Me
“Boys marry their mothers,” the old saying goes. But then, it’s an old saying, and so does not account for new developments. Like, what if the boy Ty started life as the girl Claire? Would he then marry his father? And what if that father — a man who describes himself at the play’s outset as “shoved into the world, born scared” — took his wife’s advice that “it’s better to travel alone than to travel in bad company” and decided he was bad company, and so left his wife and child to travel alone? Would young Claire, as a result, be inclined to marry someone beset by the same fears and tendencies as her absent father? What about after transitioning?
Hilariously, the most common refrain offered up in a play that raises so many questions is, “It is what it is.” But is it? Isn’t the big thing about a world where a girl can decide she’s a boy the idea that change is possible? That it doesn’t have to be what it is? Consider: at the outset, Ty and his unhappy wife Nora arrive at Ty’s childhood home and start talking about how to make it their own. Well, how to make it Nora’s own. Later, when Ty complains that everything’s changing, another character answers, “Houses are built to change. You use the bones to build something new. What more could a house want?” That same character tells Ty not to let what happened to him as a child — you know, being abandoned by drunkie Daddy, no biggie — dictate his life today. “Grow up and move on.”
And yet, there are things that do not change. Ty's mom declares that “all men are shitty fathers. It is what it is.” While we’re at it: Nora does not want her body to be inhospitable to new life. “I want a baby!” she cries. “I would be a good mother! It’s not fair!” Maybe not, but it is what it is. That’s why Ty volunteers to stop taking his T and carry a child. Much to his own mother’s dismay. “You should be enough,” she tells Ty. “What a waste. All that work. You’re just gonna throw yourself away for her. You’re a man. She’s changing you. She’s changing this house.* You’re my son. I don’t want my son carrying a baby. Maybe you’re not meant to have children.”
That’s…a lot to take in — just on the page. Wait until you hear it delivered by Dale Soules as Dale. The play contains a big surprise character, but Dale is the revelation — the one who does and does not change while others are either tossed about or stuck fast. (About that surprise: it’s fantastical without being indulgent, and it’s put to good use, and it’s worth not knowing about going in.)
What’s not a surprise is what happens at the end. It feels inevitable. The mystery is how playwright Noah Diaz feels about it. The tone seems to offer hope for the future. But the parting message hangs heavy with “It is what it is.”
*And boy howdy, how the house does change. Kudos to Adam Rigg’s set design and director Kat Yen’s implementation of the action.