RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN at the Geffen Playhouse

Photo by Michael Lamont

Bob Verini –   ArtsInLA

Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn is a report from the feminist front. Folded within a thin narrative is a lot of intriguing conversation, which in the course of two acts brings out numerous perspectives on what women do (and should) need and what they do (and should) want. The talk is often witty and almost as often wise, and to the extent to which you enjoy being pummeled by ideas, while having enough leisure to relate them to your own life, you will likely have a great time at the Geffen’s latest attraction (direct from New York with the original cast). But…
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Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

Playwright Gina Gionfriddo’s new (to LA) comedy examines the evolution of feminist ideology over the past decades, both theoretical and practical, but above all presents a fantasy scenario throughout. Read more…

Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly

“I don’t have time for men,” a female colleague recently told me — and she’s not a lesbian. She’s hard-working, ambitious, very smart, attractive, in her early 30s and professionally successful. She’s also been dating a stream of men for at least a decade. Through all that time, she’s been saying she’d love to find a guy to start a family with, but the males of her generation, she has discovered, are “boys, not men.”  Read more…

Terry Morgan  –  LAist

Many times when I’ve heard a show I’m going to see described as “a play of ideas,” it turns out that I’m getting to sit through a thinly disguised lecture, a master’s thesis with actors. For every playwright who handles this sort of thing brilliantly, such as Tom Stoppard, there are dozens who mistake exposition for theatre. Happily, Gina Gionfriddo is one of the former type of playwrights, and her Rapture, Blister, Burn is a show that blends its discussion of changing views of feminism over the last several decades with a compelling story.
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Now running through September 22.