Everybody's Girl (John Patrick)
Society is awfully myopic about the past, we tend to either lionize it or think it full of terrible prudes. The past becomes emblematic of itself and we assign roles to the media: all television in the 50’s was cloyingly wholesome, all comic books have always been about superheroes, all film in the 70s was war protesting, but none of that is ever true. The landscape is rich and varied, and if we dive in we’ll find surprises.
John Patrick’s Everybody’s Girl is a play which feels Better Call Saul by way of Full House, it’s Harold Hill: Year Zero, or Search Party: the Vietnam Years. It has both the fun, family love of a traditional sitcom and the dark, satiric humor of an indie film. Our characters are honor-deprived, openly self-interested, warm, and fiercely loyal. It’s incredibly funny in an uncomfortable way. I love it.
Everybody’s Girl starts off in the living room of an innocent-woman, Bee Bundie, as she putters around her modest home and spouts aphorisms. She’s accidentally become a news item when an imperial duck lands in her pond and a newspaper reporter named Gil, who’s hard-working if always looking for a new gig, comes to write an article.
In trying to find an angle for the article Gil starts chatting up the neighbor Linda and learns that Bee is a rather interesting individual, and all five of her sons are currently POWs in Hanoi. He quickly works out that he can launch his own ad agency if he builds it around the wholesome image of Bee, and wants to launch it by getting her chosen as mother-of-the-year.
Bee is uninterested until Gil suggests that they can use this fame to put pressure on the US government to make a prisoner exchange for her sons. So begins a morally-dubious game of Gil pushing Bee to be the conservative mom he thinks middle America wants, Linda playing games with Gil to keep him interested, and Bee going along with things in the hopes to get her sons back.
Before too long we realize that Bee and her sons aren’t as innocent as they portray themselves, and a house of cards begins to be built which threatens their standing in their small town, Gil’s aspirations, and Linda’s love life. All of this is surrounded by clever dialogue and news announcements which poke (malicious) fun at America’s tendency to look at the scandalous rather than the important and how special interests and corruption easily capture everyone up to our highest levels of government.
It’s a hilarious play that starts as You Can’t Take it With You briefly segues into Pygmalion and ends at Dr. Strangelove without the nuclear proliferation. I really can’t recommend this enough.
As a Writer
The dark comedy and satire is a favorite of mine, and the fearlessness with which John Patrick writes is an inspiration. I looked him up to see what else he did, and it turns out he’s a pulitzer winner with over thirty-six published plays so I’ll probably be busy reading him for many years to come.
