THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
This bad teacher has a warm, beating heart. A drama teacher in an English secondary school, Evie is a bit naughty in her spare time. Daytime rave, anyone? What's wrong with wearing glitter on a Saturday? Like many 20-somethings, Evie is caught between her ever-increasing adult responsibilities and the new freedom to direct her life. She can be as good or bad as she wants and no one can stop her! Except, for better or worse, that she genuinely loves the connections she makes with her students, which means she has to be the mature one, guiding them as best she can.
There are parts of this story that are deeply, truly sad, mirroring the experience of many teachers who can't fix everything for their pupils. But it reminds me that being a teacher is a calling not for the faint of heart. Teachers are people too, and they deserve our gratitude for every ounce of compassion they give to our children.
This high-quality one-woman show stars Katierose Donohue Enriquez as Kathleen Burke, a wife, mother, and loudmouth neighbor who reaches a point where the cost of her endless font of anger becomes too high. Kathleen is crass, by turns bitter about the changes to her Philadelphia neighborhood and thankful for them. But she is also clever, witty, and memorable. One line that stuck with me is when she wonders why the world is telling her she is “privileged” when she sees her youth and life trajectory as pretty terrible.
When she returns home to a surprise birthday party thrown by her family and friends, she bristles at their attention. Why must they be so loving all the time? When greater news descends, Kathleen explodes. The arc of the story is her process of self-realization. Can Kathleen learn to cope? Time will tell.
Kristin Winters gives us an intimate audience with a woman in chains (so to speak) in this one-hour Fringe performance. Seated around a taped square marking the boundaries of the artist, we watch Ghislaine Maxwell rage and despair against her circumstances. She feels no remorse for grooming girls for her paramour, Jeffrey Epstein. The girls knew what they were getting into and they wanted it. Ghislaine, on the other hand, is Hedda Gabler, desired and victimized by men, and deserving of our sympathy.
My favorite aspect of this performance was Ms. Winters's physicality as she flipped between Ms. Maxwell as the aristocrat, the child, the vixen, and the maternal figure. She is an impressive actor with an intense gaze, very likely a star in the making.
