ANDREA PHOX
Elizabeth Heflin stars in “Samantha Inside Out” at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.
A faculty party turns into a virtual psychotherapy session for the title character of Marisa Smith’s one-woman play, “Samantha Inside Out,” which is currently having its world premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, with direction by Theresa Rebeck. You see, Samantha, a high school English teacher played with charismatic flair by Elizabeth Heflin, has had an ugly fight with her husband Elliott at the party. And as the play begins, she enters the bedroom of the hosts’ absent teenage daughter, to escape.
First she buries her head in a pillow and screams. Then she begins to tell her story — to us, breaking the fourth wall at times, to interact with us directly.
Even though the play is, essentially, a monologue, it is a wild ride. Samantha is smart and funny, a natural storyteller, and full of pent-up energy.
ANDREA PHOX
Elizabeth Heflin in “Samantha Inside Out.”
Samantha tells us about the fight at the party. Elliott, a Dartmouth history professor, said something horrible, and she hit him.
She tells us about her marriage. Though they were happy at first, Elliott turned into a serial philanderer, and she recently had an affair herself.
She sings a bawdy song as if she were an Elvis Presley impersonator, and talks about sex, and shares gossip about friends and acquaintances. She tells us about the quiet desperation of her comfortable suburban life, and fantasizes about Elliott dying (choking on a grape while yelling at Sean Hannity on Fox), and even contemplates suicide. But she eventually rallies, and discovers she has more strength than she probably knew she had.
No one else enters the room in the course of the 85-minute, intermission-less play, though Samantha does talk to her two children and her best friend via cellphone. But the healing comes through her sharing her thoughts with us, about every aspect of her life, in a freewheeling stream of consciousness.
Still, two things kept me from really embracing “Samantha Inside Out” as a tale of empowerment and self-realization. One, I thought that Samantha had an off-putting sense of entitlement. I could accept that she barges into someone’s else’s room uninvited: She is distraught, after all. But once she is there, she treats the room as if it were her own, trying on the young woman’s clothes, looking through her drawers, helping herself to the food and alcohol she finds. When she finds things that were clearly meant to be hidden, she doesn’t feel shame or remorse for even a second. I felt it was a huge invasion of privacy that really made it hard for me to feel sympathetic towards her.
ANDREA PHOX
Elizabeth Heflin in “Samantha Inside Out.”
Worse, when someone, late in the play, knocks on the door (we only hear the voice without seeing the person) and makes a request so urgent that it could be a matter of life an death, Samantha responds in a callous, flippant way.
Kudos to scenic designer Jessica Parks for creating a flowery, largely pink room, full of pillows and stuffed animals, that the 60-year-old Samantha seems totally out of place in. “Did Laura Ashley die in here?” Samantha cracks.
The incongruity is part of the play’s point, though. Samantha is very aware that she is not a kid anymore. “I don’t want to think ahead,” she says, “because … what’s ahead? Seriously, huh? I’ll tell you. Adult diapers. That’s what ahead.” Yet for all of her intelligence and her wittiness — and the fact that the world surely sees her as an accomplished, successful woman — she still comes off like a spoiled teen, at times, communing with her inner brat in the privacy of her pretty pink room.
New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch will present “Samantha Inside Out” through March 15. Visit njrep.org.
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