Her four full-length plays all have premiered in Chicago and one, The Glory of Living, has gone on to productions in London and Vienna. A one-act play was included in last year's Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Gilman's Spinning Into Butter premiered in the Goodman Studio Theatre last season, and will be the vehicle for her New York debut this summer. She's a commissioned playwright, both at the Goodman and at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which dovetailed nicely with Gilman's southern roots.
It may thus be an understatement to say Gilman is a rising star among young American playwrights. But, indeed, she is the genuine article: a new American voice with the power of ideas and the ability to entertain, as she amply demonstrates with her literate, taut, compelling, and unexpectedly funny new work, Boy Gets Girl. The play is unexpectedly funny because stalking--the play's subject--isn't a laughing matter, yet Gilman's superb use of comedy, mostly in Act I, develops interest in her well-observed characters, creates irony, and builds tension.
The world premiere of Boy Gets Girl on the Goodman Theatre mainstage benefits from experienced and confident direction by Michael Maggio, who once again shows his skill with new work. The play also boasts a glorious turntable set by Michael Phillippi (he'll get a Jeff nomination for sure), and a cast both solid and true who breathe deep life even into the play's secondary roles.
Gilman spins all these themes with clarity, largely by giving Theresa several foils to bounce off of, notably a female police officer, and a breast-obsessed, sexploitation film director (inspired by Russ Meyer) who just may be Theresa's best friend. Theresa herself is anything but warm and fuzzy. Instead, Gilman's central figure is a ball-buster; a slightly anti-social, thirtysomething careerist who sympathizes with few and trusts fewer still--not even the other women in the play. (Theresa disdains and fires her Generation Next secretary.) It's this complexity of character that sets Gilman above most other writers.
With drawn mouth and suspicious eyes, Fisher creates a guarded, slightly world-weary Theresa who is shocked out of her socks by her ordeal yet finds it nearly impossible to take the hands extended to assist her. Interestingly, Gilman parses out little expository information about Theresa--she is a closed character in more ways than one--yet Fisher makes her a perfectly believable, always-on-her-guard, modern, urban woman.
Boy Gets Girl sags only at the beginning of Act II, when two extended scenes stop the story cold, undercut the building tension, and turn preachy. Clearly Gilman's intellectual platform, one scene features two men and the other two women who, in a manner of speaking, discuss the play's issues. I'll bet the farm that both scenes are shorter now than they were at the start of rehearsals, but both need to be shortened even more. In fact, the guy scene probably could go. If it did, Boy Gets Girl could run as a tight, extended one-act of under two hours.
