Theatre in Review: How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater)The term "mean girls" doesn't begin to describe the inhabitants of the hot little hell that Halley Feiffer has constructed in How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them. This story of three young things and how they torment each other down through the decades is, at its best, an astonishing exercise in the theatre of cruelty. What it all means, however, is quite another question. Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me" is playing on the radio -- as the lights come up on Ada and Sam, nine- and ten-year-old siblings ("Our mom had sex twice, a year apart," notes Ada.) playing a hand-clapping game. The ironic choice of song may be a little too on the money, given the ugly games that follow. "You're always so pretty, Ada," says Sam, who rattles her sister's nerves by replying, "It's like you're a Frenchman trying to seduce me." Ada dips into their mother's considerable booze collection. "I think it smells terrible," says Sam. "I think it smells like being an adult," says Ada. "Can we hug?" asks Sam. "Why do you care so much about hugging?" snaps Ada. "That's so gay!" (This all-purpose insult will be hurled many times, in an attempt at degrading any feelings of affection; this time, it really hits home with Sam.) "It's never weird with us, is it?" asks Ada of her sister. Actually, it's weird pretty much all the time, a constantly shifting passive-aggressive power struggle laced with undertones of menace and hints of repressed desires. (One minute they are savaging each other; a minute later, each is trying a sock around one arm to make "sock bracelets.") It all plays like A Child's Garden of Harold Pinter and becomes even more so when Feiffer introduces Dorrie, a tragic classmate who becomes Ada and Sam's emotional pawn. Dorrie is overweight and afflicted with facial scars, the result of "childhood acne." This is only one item on a list that includes pathological precocious puberty, early-onset fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. The desperately love-hungry Dorrie allows herself to be passed between Ada and Sam like an unwanted toy. In arguably the most brazen case of manipulation, Ada gives Dorrie a kiss on the cheek and comments that her face tastes funny. It's the acne medication, Dorrie admits. "Well look, Dorrie. This is how much I love you," Ada says, licking her face from her chin to her hairline. Dorrie is transfixed. Ada is triumphant. And so it goes, through high school, college, and into adulthood. Ada, denied entrance to the college of her choice, promptly falls apart, hitting the bottle and generally going to hell in a handcart. Sam and Dorrie grow close in college but, confirmed masochists, they find life without Ada has no savor. Ada commits an act of reckless endangerment that all but guarantees that Sam and Dorrie will become housemates. As the years go by, the emotional cruelty becomes more savage, with assault, murder, and some not-very-sisterly kissing added to the mix. Nobody matures; the play ends pretty much where it started, with Ada and Sam playing a game of sock bracelets. All of this may make How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them sound like other calculatedly irritating Rattlestick productions such as That Pretty Pretty, or The Rape Play or anything by Adam Rapp. But really, it is far more interesting than that. It is clearly the product of a powerful and arresting voice. Feiffer, the daughter of Jules Feiffer, has inherited some of her father's eye for hypocrisy and all-around wickedness, yet the characters never become utterly hateful because we see their deep craving for love -- which, as it happens, none of them can tolerate. In this world, power plays are their substitute for intimacy. Feiffer gets excellent support from Kip Fagan's production, which pitches the action at a precise note of hysteria that never becomes too wearing, and from three sterling performances, by Katya Cambell as the sadistic, self-destructive Ada; Keira Keeley, radiating desire for her sister as Sam; and Jen Ponton as the pathetic, needy, clinging Dorrie. At the very least, How to Make Friends and Kill Them is a fine introduction to three young actresses who are very much worth knowing about. Still, the question of where Feiffer is going with all of this hangs over the proceedings. The play is never boring, but it is repetitive and one has to wonder why the characters never acquire adult demeanors or why no other person ever intrudes on their tight little triangle. Indeed, in its conjuring of a claustrophobic, emotionally toxic atmosphere among three women, it sometimes seems like a tribute to Jean Genet's The Maids. Then again, since repressed lesbian impulses appear to be at the root of the characters' malign behavior, sometimes it plays like a revival of The Killing of Sister George. That can't be right, can it? Anyway, How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them never bores, what with all three actresses going at it tooth and nail. Adding to the feeling of strangeness is Andromache Chalfant's set, with a detailed kitchen set on a much-higher-than-normal deck, with the surrounding walls exposed, showing plenty of foam insulation, and with hundreds of liquor bottles on a lintel above the stage. (In a weird, but effective, touch, every so often the door swings open, revealing a basement staircase and a strange, hellish rumble; like so much else going on at the Rattlestick right now, I haven't the faintest idea what it signifies.) Jessica Pabst's costumes include plaid girls-school uniforms, which are swapped out for more character-specific outfits. Tyler Micoleau's lighting and Daniel Kluger's sound design are both fine. No matter how you look at it, How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them is an attention-getter, and Feiffer has a gift for invoking a child's-eye view of a world of mayhem. Next time around, we may get a larger sense of her clearly distinctive vision.--David Barbour 
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