What the Constitution Means to Me
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Cititour.com Review
In life, love, even theater – timing can be everything. Take Heidi Schreck’s highly informative and extremely moving “What the Constitution Means to Me.” The piece has been “in the works” a decade, and neither she nor the folks at New York Theatre Workshop could possibly have known the extra dimension this show would take on by being performed in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh’s bitter confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.
Indeed, even a month earlier, I doubt so many women would have been openly sobbing as Schreck – who is center stage for almost all of its 90 minutes -- describes some of her own personal tragedies, while also sharing the unsettling realization that her rights as a woman – as well as so many other “basic” human rights – are currently in jeopardy.
As a performer, Schreck – who could be the love child of political talk show host Samantha Bee and “Big Bang Theory” star Kaley Cuoco – is a warm, engaging, dynamic and sometimes self-deprecating presence who easily creates an intimate rapport with the audience. As a result, you can laugh with her when, during much of the show, she re-creates her awkward but very bright 15-year-old self who toured the country’s many American Legion posts (nicely evoked by Rachel Hauck) engaging in a debate contest about the Constitution in order to earn enough money to go to college, throwing around metaphors about witches and crucibles with wild abandon.
Similarly, you can feel comfortable enough to cry with her (inwardly or outwardly) as she recounts the long history of shocking physical abuse many members of her mother’s family experienced: a hideous pattern that her mother and father managed not to pass on to Schreck herself, and one that we now know is shared by so many of this country’s men and women.
But more than mere memoir, Schreck’s work, smartly and simply directed here by Oliver Butler, puts the many violations of human rights over the past two centuries into context while also succinctly explaining the document that both let them happen, and ultimately, stopped some of them from continuing. As she pointedly explains, what was perhaps meant to be a living, ever-expanding treatise is still, too often, interpreted to reflect the beliefs of its framers, a group of white slaveholders who didn’t see African-Americans, Native Americans, and especially women as actual human beings worthy of protection.
Schreck’s decision not to make this a true solo show, by the way, is both hit-and-miss. While I admire her decision to let her friend Mike Iveson (who offers a sharp characterization of an American Legion official) speak briefly as himself – a gay man with some gender-identity issues -- his monologue feels like a digression rather than a complement to the piece.
Conversely, bringing on a real-life high school debate student (Rosdely Ciprian, whom I saw, and Thursday Williams alternate performances) during the last 15-minutes to go “womano a womano” with Schreck over whether the Constitution should be abolished proves to be an act of brilliance. Not only, does their spirited exchange force all of us to think about the importance of the Supreme Court (and by consequence, the importance of voting for Congress and the Presidency), but seeing such a well-spoken, thoughtful young person should give all of us hope for the future of the country – something which is so needed at a moment when hope has deserted so many people.
But here’s my highest compliment; had Schreck been my Constitutional Law professor during my years at NYU Law School, I might actually have a better understanding of not just the Constitution as a whole, but especially the 9th and 14th amendments (which were used in tandem in 1973 to legalize abortion throughout the U.S in “Roe v. Wade”). And I definitely wouldn’t have fallen asleep in class.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://www.nytw.org/show/what-the-constitution-means-to-me
Cast
Heidi Schreck, Mike Iveson, Rosdely Ciprian, Thursday Williams
Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/12/2018
Closing 12/30/2018
Box Office
212-460-5475
Theatre Info
Greenwich House Theater
27 Barrow St.
New York, NY 10014
Map
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