Breathless. That’s the best word to describe Main Street Theater’s new production of Heidi Schreck’s 2017 volcano of a play, “What the Constitution Means to Me.” Opening on a simple debate-like set overlooked by rows photographs of men in military uniforms, it soars from this seeming pedestrian stage — ideal for a play that carries such a pedestrian title — into dizzying flights of laughter, emotion, legal, and political realms that never slows or relents until the final curtain.
It’s a perfect pace for a play that starts by audaciously announcing that it will mix scenes from an American Legion contest focused on the speeches of a 15-year-old girl with the perspective of her middle-aged-self who looks back at her life and the livegs of her family. A stopwatch is ticketing and there is just so much for Heidi Schreck — the name of both the playwright and the play’s central character — to tell.
It’s a daring premise that counteracts the seeming tiredness of the title. But keep in mind the title matters — especially that little term “Me.” This is a subjective exploration of the words and ideas in the defining document of the United States as well of the consequences following from those words and ideas. The play puts particular stress on the way women have been ignored and silenced since the first days of the document that announces its reason for existence as “to form a more perfect Union.”
That it can jump into such ideas without devolving into op-ed-like tedium is a triumph for Schreck’s craft. Just as she balances the character Heidi’s 15-year-old and adult selves on the stage, so she balances poignancy and side-splitting comedy. And she even finds a way to bring in a male voice through the Legionnaire contest supervisor and the “actor” who plays him. Most importantly, like any serious work that seeks to convince us of its ideas, the play leaves the final decision to the audience when it calls and takes a vote on a simple question: should the Constitution be abolished — a vote that changes with each audience that attends the play.
Schreck’s script is so finely tuned that it needs a strong and flexible production to pull it off, and Main Street meets the challenge. Key is the performance of Shannon Emerick as Heidi. She brings seemingly endless energy to all aspects of her character: the 15-year-old just striving to make scholarship money for college and find happiness with her movie idol Patrick Swayze in his “Dirty Dancing” days; the pregnant college graduate afraid to tell her feminist mother that she wants an abortion; the middle-aged woman steeped in constitutional history and anxious to do battle with Supreme Court justices denying abused women protection as they argue over the meaning of “shall.”
Emerick can overflow in teenage angst, cowl in nervousness, and cry out like Medea — shifts she manages without batting an eye. In Main Street’s intimate setting, it is a performance that reaches out and puts its hands on the audience, one second throwing us to the floor, the next lifting us up into graceful ballet flight.
And though his part as the Legionnaire and his actor is considerably smaller, Seán Patrick Judge is also well cast: able to project the stoic, stickler nature of the Legionnaire judge and the sensitivity of an actor drawing on his past. It is a selfless and beautifully realized part. Elizabeth Barnes who joins in as a student debater near the end of the show projects that sense of unease one expects of a student on stage, but she also seamlessly makes the case for her point of view leading up to the audience vote.
All these performances are enhanced by the stage’s simple set design and some well-managed voice-overs from historical figures who mutter and cough much more meaningfully than their modern counterparts. Moreover, director Sophia Watt keeps every moment crisp and sharp. She makes sure the actors fill the stage, and she abets them in leading the audience into and through the whirlwind of performance.
Undoubtedly, some audience members will strongly disagree with Schreck’s ideological positions, but only the hardest, most insecure marble statues will find much to complain about the way her play engages her ideas — including her belief that the audience has to have room to express itself. Whatever the Constitution means to you, see Main Street’s production and join in the debate that is key to American democracy.
“What the Constitution Means to Me” is on stage at Houston’s Main Street Theater through Oct. 15.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.
