Hard Choices, Same as They Ever Were
Charles IsherwoodJune 13, 2012: A good, old-fashioned consciousness-raising session flares into life in the first act of “Rapture, Blister, Burn,” the intensely smart, immensely funny new play by Gina Gionfriddo that opened Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons. Over late afternoon martinis, four women representing three generations dive into a freewheeling conversation about how women’s lives have and have not changed since the 1970s. The image of women rapping away about gender roles may hark back to that seemingly distant era, but the rap itself is rich in new perspectives. Consider this unlikely phenomenon: The ideas of Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist scold of the “me” decade, are given about as much airtime as those of Betty Freidan, one of the movement’s heroines.
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