Hurricane Diane
Written by Madeleine George
Directed by Leigh Silverman
New York Theatre Workshop
March 12, 2019
Production website
💉💉 out of 5.

You are not going to expect this one!  Part homage to HGTV and part send up on Greek mythology, you just don’t know what you are getting.  A god, Dionysus, now named Diane and described in the text as a “butch charm factor”  is a very lively trans performer who is a bit all over the place.  She has lots of energy but I am just not sure to what point.  

The script does take us to a New Jersey cul de sac where three mighty wound up housewives are trying to piece their lives and their backyards into something new after the most recent hurricane.  The women have some very HGTV ideas pulled right off of tv and the magazines.  They want curbs and terraces and wrought iron lawn furniture, but Diane has other ideas.  Tired of generations of man destroying the land, Diane insists on a a lawnscape free of curbs and borders and design.   Diane is intent on returning the world to what it was meant to be.  He has a very hard sell.

The housewives in this play have some very funny scenes and they and they are all at top comic pitch.  Many acting classes will be picking up these scenes!  The big problem I had was that the trans-gendered Diane is scripted to seduce each of these women by various means.  They swoon under his/her/does-it-matter charm.  But there was NO WAY that I was buying this – – not one single ounce of seduction in my book.  You just couldn’t buy it – and the ultimate effect of the play was compromised.

It was a super fun play.  The women are a hoot.  The comic exploration of our transgressions against Mother Earth was novel – but this play was not what was written in the text.