Norma McCorvey was no Rosa Parks, but she didn't need to be. While Parks gave role-model stature to her historically defiant act of taking a seat in the whites-only section of a Montgomery city bus, McCorvey was simply an anonymous pregnant woman who was known to the public only as the first name in Roe v. Wade. Even at age 21, when the machinations that led to the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion began, McCorvey had a gritty history that had little poster-child promise.
But it does hold considerable dramatic promise, and while variations on the facts have come out in fits and spurts after the case was decided in 1973, they were relegated to footnotes to the main event, the decision itself, which was the final word on the issue �" except maybe not. Playwright Lisa Loomer doesn't pretend to be impartial in her play Roe at Berkeley Rep, and while graphic and impassioned arguments are heard from both sides, her purpose isn't to pry anyone from their opinions. There are cautionary notes sounded about the erosion of abortion rights, but her passion is the messy story �" the sausage-making �" behind the neatly wrapped one at the Supreme Court.
McCorvey and Sarah Weddington, her lead attorney in the case, are dueling protagonists in often-conflicting memories and reenactments of their date with destiny and its aftermath. The trajectories of their lives are foreshadowed in early scenes, with Weddington in suburban Austin with women who could be at Tupperware party but who are learning how to explore their vaginas with a hand mirror, while McCorvey is raising hell at the Red Devil Bar in Dallas. Weddington was barely out of law school when she convinced McCorvey to be her Jane Roe, and she has gone on to have a dignified career. But McCorvey's story never stopped lurching erratically forward. It is her story that is most compelling, and takes over the heretofore-shared narratives for a long stretch of the second act.
It has all the makings of a TV movie; in fact, it was, and we briefly see Holly Hunter accepting an Emmy for her portrayal of a flawed heroine. The catch is the movie stopped before McCorvey's life became curiouser and curiouser. Loomer's play takes us on that journey, and Sara Bruner is an ornery spitfire in the role of an opportunist, victim, and in yet another twist, a loving lesbian partner for many years.
As Weddington, Sarah Jane Agnew brings a stately presence to the role of the ambitious lawyer who works with Linda Coffee as her second-fiddle lawyer, a role played with endearing mousiness by Susan Lynskey. Most of the cast plays multiple roles, with Pamela Dunlap taking McCorvey's slatternly mother to horrifyingly hilarious extremes, Catherine Castellanos bringing heartbreaking patience to the role of McCorvey's long-term partner, and Jim Abele exuding an unctuous, seductive charm as an evangelist who makes it his mission to save McCorvey's soul.
Loomer's play is part docudrama and part scenes of straight-ahead theater, efficiently directed by Bill Rauch on Rachel Hauck's set that reflects those two theatrical styles. Nine chairs occupied by black-robed figures are positioned upstage at the start and the end of the play. The tenuousness of Roe v. Wade surviving in the coming years is implied at the end, but the potency of the play is its backstory and abundant ironies. Such as the fact that Sarah Weddington could afford to fly to Mexico for an illegal abortion, while Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. Jane Roe, was stuck in Texas, gave birth to three children, and never got her abortion.
Roe will run through April 2 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are $25-$100. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.