Showtime: Rapture, Blister, Burn will be on stage at the Wilma Theater through Nov. 8. PHOTO COURTESY OF ALEXANDER IZILIAEV
The opening production of the Wilma Theater season, Rapture, Blister, Burn, has been so popular that it’s been extended through this Saturday, Nov. 8.
This gives Nancy Boykin of Elkins Park more opportunity to play the role of a mother who can deliver witty one-liners and has a fondness for martinis.
“When I read the script, I could see the humor in her,” recalls Boykin about the character she plays. “She’s one of the funnier characters.”
Gina Gianfriddo’s play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama last year. It’s a female-centered play with a cast of five: four women, one man.
Boykin plays the mother of a middle-aged professor who is successful — and single.
The daughter has come home from the college, where she teaches because her mother is recovering from a heart attack — but is not seriously ill.
In fact, she’s well enough to enjoy her daily martinis.
Boykin has more entrances and exits than any other cast member. That’s because this mother eagerly gets up to fix martinis as soon as it’s cocktail hour.
Each time, Boykin returns carrying a martini glass filled with what looks just like a martini — liquid plus an olive. The liquid, of course, is not vodka; it’s water. But the olive is real. And the martini glass is not plastic, but real glass. Director Joanna Settle wanted real glass.
“She’s very particular about props,” says Boykin, noting that Settle looked at three or four different types of martini glasses before choosing the design she wanted.
Backstage, a props master takes care of filling the martini glass and handing it to Boykin, who sips from it periodically while onstage.
“I get somewhat tipsy towards the end of one scene,” she reports.
That’s when she delivers the line that invariably gets the most laughs of the evening.
The women are debating the ideas of anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, who felt that women should play hard to get in order to win husbands.
Boykin seems to agree, as she says: “No one buys the cow if he can get the milk for free.”
The conversations are wide-ranging, mostly focused on women’s issues. But there are also plot developments, especially when Catherine, the brainy daughter, starts an affair with her former boyfriend who is now married.
Their affair takes place in the house where Catherine is living with her mother. In one scene, which takes place at night, the lovers are cozily snuggling — and Catherine’s mother walks in.
Boykin is barefoot, dressed only in a nightgown, with hair tousled, as if she’s just awakened. And she’s unflappable at the sight of the lovers.
“Our director wanted the audience to see that it’s now a different household, much less restrained. And I’m more free, too. That’s why my hair is supposed to look wild and messy,” says Boykin, who teases her hair backstage to get that effect.
Wearing a nightgown onstage is nothing new to this veteran actress. Last season, she had the lead in a play titled The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington.
As Miz Martha Washington, a woman in her 90s, Boykin was lying on her deathbed in a nightgown for the entire play.
The actress, 64, has had other roles playing much older women, including playing Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy.
But this is Boykin’s first play in which the theories of feminism — and anti-feminism — are a major focus. Before rehearsals even began, the cast members studied material about the issues that the dramaturg sent them.
Boykin went even further and ordered a copy of a book by Schlafly.
“As I was reading, I started yelling to my husband about how ridiculous she was,” relates Boykin.
But of course, as an actress, she didn’t let her personal opinion affect her performance. Toward the end of the play, she even offers a toast to Schlafly.
In fact, this toast is the finale of the play, and Boykin does the moment full justice.
With her extensive theater career spanning 25 years, she’s had her share of challenges onstage. Her performance in the Miz Martha Washington play was a tour de force for which she was nominated for a 2014 Barrymore award as outstanding leading actress in a play.
Still another Barrymore nomination this season — this one for outstanding supporting actress — was for her role in Circle Minor Transformation presented by Theatre Horizon.
The busy actress also teaches full time in Temple University’s Department of Theater.
And she’s not the only theater professional in the family. Husband Dan Kern is an actor, director and a professor in Temple’s theater department.
Son James inherited the theater gene. He had his first role at age 5 in a production of Music Man in which his mother also had a role.
Now 24, James Kern is a professional actor who is currently an understudy for the leading role of Pip in the Arden’s Great Expectations.
As for his mother, she’s delighted with her experience in Rapture, Blister, Burn — her third role in a Wilma production.
“My fellow cast members are talented actors and wonderful people,” she says. “Our audiences are thoroughly enjoying this. And that’s very rewarding to us.” ••
