By ADAM CROWE
A Seat on the Aisle
This week brings ASOTA to the first production of 2023 at Indianapolis’ Fonseca Theatre Company. The Fonseca has designated this season the Season of Choices and they start with a big swing by producing Rachel Lynett’s Abortion Road Trip.
Prior to this production, the play received a workshop production produced by Theatre Prometheus as part of Capital Fringe where it won Best Comedy (2017) and then was later presented by Theatre Prometheus, as a part of the 2017 Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival. If the playwright’s name rings a bell, Fonseca produced her award-winning play, Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson) in May 2021.
Based upon the title alone, you might assume that Abortion Road Trip is a pointed examination of a very hot-button issue.
And you’d be right.
(From left) Carrie Ann Schlatter as Driver, Viviana Quiñones as Lexa, and Leona Jones as Minnie in a scene from FTC’s Abortion Road Trip. (Photo by Ankh Productions)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision (finding that abortion is NOT a Constitutional right) was the impetus for the production, though the play itself pre-dates that decision.
Set in 2016, Lynett’s story centers on two sisters and the journey they take from Texas to New Mexico to obtain the medical care of the play’s title. If you are looking for “balanced” or a two-sided examination of a very polarizing issue, this is not the play for you. That is not to say that it spends its time demonizing one side or the other. Rather, Lynett’s story involves six women with various connections to abortions, only one of whom represents a point of view that finds the procedure morally objectionable. The other characters ultimately leave the decision to the woman who is pregnant.
That woman, Lexa, played by Viviana Quinones, is accompanied on her journey by her sister Minnie, played by Leona Jones. For plot purposes, the two travel by taxi, driven by a “Driver,” played excellently by Carrie Ann Schlatter. Paige Scott and Megan Ann Jacobs ably play various supporting roles, but the playwright’s focus is on the sisters and their driver.
Director Abby Scharbrough has assembled a somewhat uneven cast, and that occasionally affected my ability to fully believe all the characters at times. More noticeably, the playwright has overstuffed her story with so many issues, coincidences, and plot contrivances, that it is sometimes difficult for the audience to stay invested in the naturalism of the main story itself. However, Lynett has a gift for dialogue. It is mostly smart and often very funny. When she sticks to the central characters, she tells an honest, compassionate story of the choices that women face and the resulting consequences.
Bernard Killian’s set design and Jeanne Bowling’s costume design were both effective. No lighting or sound designer was listed.
Bottom line: If you appreciate contemporary theater that confronts issues of gender, power, and politics (with a dash of family secrets), I suspect that you will find Abortion Road Trip to be worth your time. I’ll take thoughtful, issue-oriented theater (even with faults) over low stakes, timid stories any day.
Fonseca Theatre Company’s production of Rachel Lynett’s Abortion Road Trip runs Thursdays through Sundays through Feb. 26 at FTC’s home at 2508 W. Michigan St., Indianapolis. Tickets and further information can be found at fonsecatheatre.org.
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