Confusion Between Good and Bad?

Paula Vogel is a writer of brilliance. She presents very difficult and usually sensitive subjects in a humorous, almost relaxed manner. Her themes of pedophilia and extreme hated between sisters in her Mammary Plays are intricate and intense, yet exciting and hilarious. One of her reoccurring ideas is the undefined characteristics of her “good” character and her “bad” one. In both her Mammary Plays, Vogel declares one character as the “good” one and one character as the “bad” one.

In How I Learned to Drive, her play about a girl named ‘Lil Bit and her pedophilic uncle Uncle Peck, the beginning leads you to hate Uncle Peck and think of him as a creep and a loser, and you pity ‘Lil Bit; however as the play progresses, you being to feel more and more compassion towards Uncle Peck. He seems more useless than ‘Lil Bit. Likewise, in the play The Mineola Twins, the “nice” twin Myrna, seems like a perfect child in the beginning of the play. You pity her as her “evil” twin Myra has sex with Myrna’s boyfriend. As the play goes on, and time advances, Myra turns from a crazy slut to an eccentric liberal, and Myrna stays the same. She still, forty years later, refuses to forgive her ex boyfriend who cheated on her. She finds fault in everything that has changed from when she was growing up. We learn to accept Myra more so than we accept Myrna, which is a big change from the beginning of the play.

Vogel’s remarkable writing forces you to realize that initial judgments don’t always last long. Both of her plays lead you to sympathize with one character in the beginning, and then slowly, or suddenly, change your mind. Her intense themes mixed in with her extreme characters makes for a great play, and a very enjoyable read.