Impressive Awards Aside, ‘How I Learned’ Celebrates Pedophilia

I walked out of the Mark Taper Forum production of “How I Learned to Drive” feeling repelled and nauseated. And yet the poster in front of the box office featured a quote from a stunning New York review and informed me that Paula Vogel’s play had won the Pulitzer Prize, the Obie, Drama

Desk and New York Drama Critics Circle awards for 1998. There were also articles in the program that described the venerated history of the Pulitzer and the imp- ressive background of the play’s director, Mark Brokaw.

So what does my opinion matter? I’m told to accept it, to like it. If I condemn it, I’m simply shying from controversial, thought-provoking theater.

Funny. My thoughts were never provoked. It seemed to me from the outset that this was a play that celebrated pedophilia.

Not according to Mr. Brokaw, who informs us in the program that “it’s not about pedophilia as much as it’s about a very special, very singular relationship between these two individuals.” Mr. Brokaw is referring to the relationship between 40-year-old Peck and his 11-year-old niece, Li’l Bit, who gets felt up by her uncle not once, not twice, but three times on the Taper stage.

Such “special relationships” are usually met with public derision and a prison sentence. And I think that’s because most of us assume that any adolescent, even one as wise and prescient as the character Ms. Vogel has created, though sexually responsive, is not yet capable of making responsible sexual decisions. And for that reason, I think it’s fair to remind Mr. Brokaw and the Pulitzer committee that societal experience has shown us that pedophiles ruin lives.

Not that you’d ever get that impression from the Taper production. After the play’s penultimate scene, in which Peck grabs his niece’s breasts right there in the car, we watch the 35-year-old Li’l Bit get into her present-day automobile. She adjusts the rear-view mirror, and there’s Peck smiling from the back seat. She smiles lovingly back at him. Van Morrison plays in the background. Lights fade.

So, despite a few nasty episodes, they shared something special after all.

And why shouldn’t they? In the production, Li’l Bit is played by Molly Ringwald, who looks 35, and Peck is played by Brian Kerwin, who seems only a decade older. We’re told she’s remembering all this--so Ms. Ringwald plays young--but the visual image of the scenes in which the couple argue, titillate and fondle one another is of two consenting adults. Ms. Ringwald raises her voice, curls her lips and acts girlish--but then, so did Marilyn Monroe. There’s a piece of jazzy hoochie-coochie music that kicks off the proceedings and paintings of Vargas girls on the set to establish the hot and heavy atmosphere. These elements give the play the air of sexual “controversy” that earned it so much attention in the first place.

But what if Li’l Bit was played by an 11-year-old? Picture it, if your stomach permits. Would we still laugh when she makes the joke about mistaking pedophilia for “learning how to bicycle”? Would the music and the Vargas girls make us sit back and smile and try to open our minds and hearts to include Peck’s anomalous yearnings? Would we reread Mr. Brokaw’s comment about the result of those yearnings being “singular” and “special”? Would our hearts go out to the young actress who would have to pretend to live through such an ordeal?

Would the pundits of the Pulitzer, the New York critics and all the smiling supporters of this drama still stand behind its presentation of the love between a sensitive child molester and his assenting adolescent paramour?

Under the play’s bubble-gum ‘60s-song-playing, fun-loving, shiny pop veneer lurks something darker and more sinister: the idea that in America we venerate and even confer awards upon the favorable depiction of sick, destructive behavior.

To quote Mr. Brokaw, “It is its own particular kind of love story, and I think that’s what’s special about it.”

I think that’s what’s wrong with it, Mr. Brokaw.

Rebecca Baldwin works in motion picture development and lives in Hollywood.