‘O.K.!' Review: When the Abortion Clinic Cancels
In a shared dressing room of a theater somewhere in Oklahoma, an actress named Melinda is the first to arrive. It's 90 minutes before the curtain rises, and to the keen-eyed stage manager, Alex, she seems not quite herself.
'You look like you've been throwing up,' Alex says, getting it right in one guess, not that Melinda is about to admit that she is pregnant. She has an abortion scheduled, and no one needs to know.
But in Christin Eve Cato's new backstage dramedy, 'O.K.!,' Melinda's timing is on a collision course with the rollback of reproductive rights. The date is June 24, 2022, and the U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade. Soon the clinic calls to cancel Melinda's appointment permanently, and the clear vision she had of her future clouds over with panic.
'O.K.!' is about how Melinda (Danaya Esperanza) moves through that fear as the clock ticks down to showtime, with the help of her fellow actors Jolie (Yadira Correa) and Elena (Claudia Ramos Jordán) and their collective reverence for tarot-card wisdom. Also instrumental: the calming competency of Alex (a very funny Cristina Pitter), who herds unruly cast members like cats.
The barely glimpsed show within a show is a nonunion tour of a musical called 'Okla-Hola,' a parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein's cowboy-Americana classic 'Oklahoma!,' told from a Latino point of view. Melinda stars as Lori (a version of Laurey, of course, the farmhouse beauty pursued by two suitors), with the jaded, politically engaged Jolie as Titi Elder (a variation on Laurey's Aunt Eller) and the high-spirited, Spanglish-speaking Elena as Ada Ana (the inveterate flirt Ado Annie). In a corner of their dressing room stands a scaled-down, rustic farm windmill, which will transform into the tarot deck's glowing, 3D Wheel of Fortune. (The set is by Rodrigo Escalante.)
Directed by Melissa Crespo for Intar Theater and Radio Drama Network, 'O.K.!' blends a loving critique of the theater with a historically minded explication of threats to women's health and autonomy, leavens it all with comedy and sprinkles it with the surreal. Tonally, that is quite a mix to pull off, particularly with the script's didacticism working against its drama.
On Intar's intimate Manhattan stage in Hell's Kitchen, this uneven production of an ambitious play has its mind on the disappearance of rights in the American present and its past. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Oklahoma reverted to a law from 1910 — around the time 'Oklahoma!' is set — that prohibits most abortions.
What's interesting about 'O.K.!,' as an addition to the growing niche of shows examining abortion, is how firmly it plants itself at the philosophical crossroads between proceeding with a pregnancy and ending it.
Melinda, who, at 36, is a New Yorker with a law-student boyfriend and anemic personal finances, had not meant to get pregnant. Barely past the theater industry's Covid-19 shutdown, unsure of her relationship, she does not believe she is ready for a child.
Jolie, Melinda's longtime friend, encourages her to question that assumption — which, in this fraught context, could be read as searching for a silver lining in a loss of liberty.
Reassuring her, Jolie says: 'It's your choice if you want to have a baby, and it's your choice if you don't. I'm just wondering if life would be over for you in case you're unable to get this abortion — and I think not.'
Melinda receives similar counsel from the bizarre and wonderful Two of Swords (Pitter), a tarot card come to life, whose red-lit, fog-shrouded dance is the show's campiest moment. (Choreography is by Pitter, lighting by María-Cristina Fusté, costumes by Lux Haac.) The Two of Swords suggests to Melinda that she make a list of pros and cons.
So, on the advice of a talking tarot card, that's what she does. Her considerations include dystopian possibilities if she seeks an abortion ('What if I get caught by the government of Oklahoma for trying to leave?' she says) and inescapable realities if she decides against one — like the need for day care.
'How much would that cost in New York City?' Melinda erupts. At the performance I saw, a woman in the audience answered her with an emphatic 'Mm-hm!'
By play's end, though, Melinda has yet to leave that crossroads, mulling paths that looked very different just a day before.
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