First among these is the admission by Rachel’s husband, Tom, on Christmas Eve no less, that he has taken out a contract on her life. “What do you mean?’’ she asks him. “Life insurance?’’
Er, no. In fact, a hit man is about to break into the house to do the job Tom hired him for. We never learn why Tom took this drastic step, though Rachel’s heedless and nonstop prattle offers a clue.
Yet we’re on her side from the beginning. Rachel is Candide in a flannel nightgown, a woman of unfailing good cheer (“I’m having one of my euphoria attacks!’’ she says in the moments before Tom breaks the bad news) who is ever willing to believe the best of people, even as they repeatedly turn out not to be who they seem.
Yet it is also Rachel who early on poses the question that is at the heart of “Reckless’’: “Do you think we ever really know people?’’
Director Scott Edmiston stages “Reckless’’ with great vigor, abetted considerably by Cristina Todesco’s imaginative set, with its multiple doors and its upside-down Christmas trees nicely mirroring Rachel’s situation.
Forced to flee for her life and leave behind her two young children, Rachel embarks on a through-the-looking-glass odyssey that will bring her face-to-face with one eccentric after another, and one town named Springfield after another. (Written in the mid-1980s, “Reckless’’ anticipated a running joke on “The Simpsons’’ about the ubiquity of that municipal moniker).
Rachel accepts a ride from a curious chap named Lloyd (Larry Coen), who takes her home to meet Pooty (Kerry A. Dowling), the love of his life. Pooty is both paraplegic and deaf, or so Lloyd believes.
Secrets abound in “Reckless.’’ Behind his jovial do-gooderism, is Lloyd trying to atone for things he’s done in his past? And what about Trish Hammers (Sandra Heffley), the gnome-like supervisor at the humanitarian foundation where Rachel goes to work as a clerk? She sure seems to have something to hide.
