Not Exactly “The Happy Ones”

Here’s my quick thumbs-up versus thumbs-down rundown for Green Lake’s Bathhouse Theater’s current production of “The Happy Ones”:

• Ah, Southern California in the ’70.  Even if I wasn’t there, I watched it on The Brady Bunch and that was the life
• The soundtrack to The Big Chill is my favorite
• Fun-lovin’, outspoken leading lady in tall leather boots?  Groovy!

• Not at all happy.  Sad.  Too, too sad
• I have no nostalgia for the ’70’s.  The ’70’s are over-rated
• Eh, California – who needs it?

I have to confess to growing up in Southern California in the 1970’s.  In a ranch house in a suburban subdivision.  Everyone I knew had swimming pools.  We wore lots of polyester.  We were privileged and sun-drenched.

So The Happy Ones did bring on some nice nostalgia vibes.  Yes, we did know heavily-tanned women who were divorced, smoked too much, partied too hard, cooked casseroles, and wore too much eyeliner and false eyelashes.  Yes, we did know guys with Starsky and Hutch-style shades and big sideburns, wide ties, pinky rings and vinyl jackets who were likewise hedonists and played lots of golf.

This all seems harmless enough but then a startling cultural clash with a group of immigrants also appearing at that time in that place, refugees from the US war in Vietnam, intrudes.  We get an unimaginably tragic encounter which is a brave choice of subject matter, but needs to be handled with great sensitivity.  This production gives it a good try but feels uncomfortably inadequate.  How can this deepest of losses make sense when your lifestyle is so shallow?