Two ladies float around on the Pacific on surf boards. They are of an age when ladies do not ordinarily float around on surf boards. Hot tubs, maybe, water aerobics at the local YWCA, maybe. But surfboards off the California coast?
Well that is what this trio of old and getting older friends are doing when the lights go up on “Wipeout”, the very cleverly staged and hilariously acted play currently running at the Gloucester Stage Co.
The pair, Claudia and Wynn, are soon joined by Gary. This trio of boomer BFFs go way back to grammar school, but otherwise seem as unalike as proverbial snowflakes.
Wynn is a multi-married, social climbing, Botox victim. Claudia is a devoted wife, mother and kindergarten teacher who has hatched this escapade as a birthday present for Gary, who is a larger-than-life lesbian and good time gal who has always dreamed of being a surfer.
Something is going on with Gary. We don’t know what, but it’s why the three of them are out there floating around on her birthday waiting impatiently for their surf instructor to arrive. Gary is, of course, thrilled. The other two, not so much. In fact, not at all for Wynn who is not so much floating as clinging to her surfboard for dear life while hurling invectives at each passing wave.
The boomers — a generation whose credo was once “never trust anyone over 30” — are now over 70 and they are not going gentle into that dark night, and this has inspired a whole new genre of humor that is getting big laughs and big bucks. Case in point, the late, great Nora Ephron’s bestseller, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”
Ephron’s memoir is described by Goodreads as “a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.”
“Wipeout” is all those things, but as the ladies bob away on their surfboards this play becomes something more than an albeit hilarious floating comedy of manners Something which, like the ocean itself, is deeper and darker and more powerful and beautiful.
This happens slowly and in the person of their surfing dude instructor, the aptly named Blaze who blazes onto the scene as lithe and fit and young as the ladies are not. Navigating his surfboard as if he was born on it, he proves a very excellent instructor indeed. But no spoiler alerts here. You will have to see and hear for yourself how the entire mood, meaning and language of the play shifts like a wave shifts as it rides the sea, and the sea becomes a character in and of itself.
Playwright Aurora Real De Asua says she conceived her play as an homage to her grandmother, who was still riding waves into her 80s.
“I think as people we become stronger versions of ourselves as we get older. Maybe it’s true that our body declines but what I find is that we grow truer to the core of who we really are the less time we have left on this planet,” she said.
A surfer herself, she said her play is “a love letter to women over 50 and on the way up, as well as a love letter to the sea. and because it’s a comedy, it’s there for anyone who loves to laugh.”
Laugh you will. and cry you might. As one audience member said after seeing the play, “The pathos, the journey these people went through really touched us.”
For director Shana Gozansky, the play was “like seeing people really sitting in the truth of their life.” Or, as the playwright puts it, “we’re gonna watch as the ocean erodes away all of the masks they move through life with.”
For Rebecca Bradshaw, the ever buoyant Gloucester Stage artistic director, the challenge was turning the stage into the ocean bobbing with surfers. This was accomplished so cleverly that audience members may have found themselves wishing they could dive in.
And, last but not least, the wonderful ensemble cast: Cheryl D. Singleton is the voice of reason as Claudia, Noelle Player is a diva in her own mind as Wynn, Karen MacDonald is unsinkable as Gary, and Thomas Bilotta is blazing as Blaze. They made “Wipeout” a stand-out.