L’il Bit’s family, especially Aunt Mary, know what’s going on with Peck and his niece. He helps people out, washes dishes for his wife, teaches his nephew Bobby to fish (with a disturbing conclusion). She’s 11.Īs in many stories, more than one person is to blame. One of the final-and most disturbing scenes-is Peck teaching L’il Bit to drive, sitting on his lap. (His pinups-coy and flirty Varga Girls-are projected on the rear wall.) L’il Bit is 13. She remembers the photo shoot in Peck’s basement, where he photographs her barely wearing lingerie. In one scene, she’s 43, loves to drive and drink-while driving. L’il Bit’s story jumps back and forth in time, as memory sometimes does as it reveals itself out of sequence. Uncle Peck, married to Aunt Mary, L’il Bit’s mother’s sister, teaches L’il Bit to drive, to drink hard liquor and eventually to reject her own sexuality. Their experiences together are the core of How I Learned to Drive, which is about driving lessons and a lot more. The man who does is Uncle Peck (John Mossman), who “loved her from the day she was born,” but especially once she began to blossom. Boys tease her and men want to fondle her.

She’s sensitive about her breasts and avoids activities that result in “jiggling.” Like running and dancing. Even as a young teenager, she is endowed with large breasts. Her memory play introduces her close-knit oversexed South Carolina family and her own yearnings to escape their clutches and go away to college. In the 1960s, L’il Bit (Elizabeth Birnkrant) is a high school student and teller of her own story in scrambled time sequences. Vogel’s language is poetic and the events realistic. Paula Vogel’s 1997 play, directed by Kayla Adams at the Artistic Home, won several awards (including the 1998 Pulitzer), ran for almost a year off-Broadway, and is as fresh and relevant as it was 20 years ago. It illustrates how the predator sometimes gets help from complicit family members and even the victim. It’s a disturbing and ultimately sad story about pedophilia, sexual abuse, drinking and driving. How I Learned to Drive isn’t a play for the squeamish.

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