'Boy Gets Girl' teaches some lessons

The University Players production of Rebecca Gilman's "Boy Gets Girl" premiered at the Rose Firebay Theatre in the John Waldron Arts Center Friday. The play, dedicated to stalking and issues about the objectification of women, ironically came just in time for Valentine's Day. For the most part, this play was well-acted, but a few things about the play bothered me.\nIn the show, a professional journalist goes on a blind date with a seemingly nice, attractive man named Tony. The date goes fairly well and Tony seems nice enough for her to accept a second one. Over the course of the next several days, Tony's obsessive flower sending and phone calls begin to bother Theresa, and she dumps him. Tony's behavior violently escalates and Theresa soon finds her safe world crumbling around her. Tony's obsessive eventually leads to the total destruction of Theresa's personal and professional life.\nGilman designed her script to draw public attention to the lack of resources women have to stop and punish their stalkers. While many of the scenes are compelling and frightening, I felt at times Gilman takes her argument too far. Instead of just targeting stalking as something that needs to stop, Gilman's characters continually discuss how men become obsessed with women based on their physical attributes. I felt like Gilman was trying to put a man's physical attraction to a woman on the same level as stalking, which is a bit of a stretch. Criminalizing common attraction seemed too bold of a step to make. Through no fault of the actors, at times, the play was like an after-school special rather than a drama.\nMost of the actors did a nice job with the material given to them. The play was actor-driven and did not contain fancy scenery or props. The cast made their way around this inconvenience and even re-arranged the modular, representational set themselves during scene changes. Simple blocks were pushed together to become beds and pulled apart to represent chairs.\nI particularly enjoyed the performance of senior Aristotle Stamat who oozed with sleaze in his portrayal of cult porn director Les Kennkat. I also thought senior Stephanie Dodge, who played Theresa, did a fine job playing the tightly wound, scared character, especially in the more dramatic moments. Her facial expressions and tone aptly conveyed Theresa's fear and well-founded paranoia.\nI had to question some of the directorial choices made by senior Matthew Zaradich. The popular music soundtrack incorporated into this play sounded canned and detracted from what was happening on stage. With all of the drama in this play, it seemed inappropriate. The symbolic posters hanging in the background also detracted from the play which would have stood better on its own. The posters were abstract paintings and illustrations with the scene's theme written on them -- "girl," "boy" and "love" for example. Tony would come between scenes and angrily throw down the old poster to replace it with the new one. While the gesture was well-intended to compliment the play, I felt it was intrusive to the acting itself and bordered on cheesy.\nIn spite of the problems in the show, I thought the play was well worth seeing, as it was well-acted and illustrated valuable points about the problem of stalking in our society. \n"Boy Gets Girl" will be playing at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Rose Firebay Theatre in the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St.