Photo Credits: Molly Shoemaker
By Michele Markarian
“The Mermaid Hour” by David Valdes. Directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary. Presented by Moonbox Productions, One Arrow Street, Cambridge, through May 19.
There’s a lot to unpack in David Valdes’s The Mermaid Hour, which deals with a trans child, her parents, her peers, and their parents, as well as marriage, the internet, and childrearing in general. If you happen to be a parent witnessing this production, it’s a pretty rocky ride indeed.
Vi (Brenny O’Brien) is twelve years old and trans, although she has not started yet on any beta blockers. Her parents, Pilar (Monica Risi) and Bird (Phil Tayler) are coping with this as best they can, which is pretty damn well. They are respectful of their daughter, despite the tension that comes with having a headstrong child who is anxious to speed things up, both with her transitioning and her sexual behavior (google “Rainbow Party”). When Vi is caught behind closed doors with her gay friend Jacob (Nicholas Papayoanou) partially clothed, Jacob’s Singaporean mother Mika (Clara Tan) has a fit, as she thinks they’re too young. Pilar disagrees – “He’s twelve. It’s not too early,” she says of Jacob, which is why it’s surprising when Pilar won’t let her daughter leave the house in a mermaid costume with a clamshell top, claiming it’s indecent. Pilar really flips – “Our daughter just posted a half-dressed video of herself on YouTube!” when Vi makes a video for a YouTube channel called The Mermaid Hour, wearing her mermaid costume and declaring her love for Jacob. This is the last straw for Mika, as her son has just been outed to his family in Singapore without anyone’s consent.
Jacob, however, loves Vi only as a friend. One of the more poignant scenes in the play is when Vi, knowing that Jacob likes boys, asks him if he’d like her better if she dressed like a boy. He gently tells her that he likes her for her – “I don’t want you to be a boy because then you wouldn’t be you.” But Vi, not wanting to be friend-zoned and unhappy that her parents won’t let her have hormone shots, runs away. Like I said, she’s a headstrong girl. It’s hard to understand why Pilar won’t let her have the shots; one of her reasons is that the shots will make Vi sterile. Even Bird is confused by Pilar’s concern; did she think that Vi would be carrying a child? Pilar, an aspiring nurse, is undeterred, telling Bird, “I imagined her as a bride, as a mother, and as a grandmother.” Jeez. Is this what it means to mother a daughter? Even my uptight and strict Armenian mother imagined more for me than that. It made me a little nuts that Pilar’s idea of a daughter was little more than looking pretty, marrying a man, and having kids. As Pilar admonishes Bird, “Someday she’s gonna want to get married, and you’re gonna walk her down the aisle.” This is from a woman with a career goal in healthcare!
If Pilar is having sexist fantasies about what it means to mother a girl, Bird has his own sexist thoughts about what he thought being the father of a son would be like, complete with season tickets to the Red Sox. In a beautifully written monologue (and beautifully performed by Tayler), Bird comes up against the edges of his own gender stereotypes vs. the overwhelming love he feels for his child. It’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
All of this is played out against Janie E. Howland’s truly gorgeous set, with waves of blue creating the ripple of the ocean, aided by Deb Sullivan’s colorful lighting design. Director O’Leary keeps the pace flowing. Despite the tension of the piece, Valdes reminds us that with love, understanding, and acceptance, all is not just possible but ultimately easy. For more information and tickets, go to: https://moonboxproductions.org/
