SHH . . . WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBORS THINK?
Resistance
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In Shh . . . What Will the Neighbors Think? author Susan Howard has created an offensive, silly parody of American family life, a hopelessly confused script that this decent cast is forced to interpret. The play concerns the Sanders family, a well-to-do clan with unsavory habits. Not only do they eat junk food at every meal (with plenty of pointless stomach-turning antics), they also dabble in child abuse and incest. After an ominous offstage voice (representing “acceptable society”) demands that they clean up their act or else, the family find that change is too much to handle. The attack on family values in this new play might have made for biting satire, but Howard couldn’t decide what she wanted to say. Her script never gets beyond a self-indulgent gross-out.
Unfortunately the script takes some able actors down with it. The cast throw themselves into this world with abandon, though it often seems they don’t understand what’s going on either. Still, the scenes around the dining-room table are often funny and entertaining. Rebekah Smith’s direction is over-the-top, which at first seems appropriate. But it relies primarily on overkill, with lots of screaming and slamming into walls.
Gosse boasts in the program that “The Resistance [is] growin’ like a tumor in the bourgeoise [sic] stupor of the Midwest.” That says a lot about the blurry goals of this group.
