How I Learned to Drive

Paula Vogel garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998 for How I Learned to Drive, staged here by the oft-incisive Theatre Unbound. The bare outlines of the plot are enough to inspire a hearty cringe: Lil' Bit, growing up in rural Maryland with an extended family in the 1960s, becomes at an early age the object of attention, then molestation, from her Uncle Peck. The play tracks Lil' Bit into adulthood, with Uncle Peck always close at hand and the trials of adolescence pulling Lil' Bit further from connecting with her body and, one presumes, reality. It's a story at once humorous and deeply, deeply serious, and the potential alchemy between such a primordial script and a crafty small company such as Theatre Unbound is intriguing as hell.
Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Nov. 7. Continues through Nov. 23, 2008