One take on The Animals and Children Took to the Streets is that it’s a timely, twisted fairytale about the Haves and the Have-Nots. This reading of Animals doesn’t imply a political agenda. It’s just recognition that with stark humor and impish caricature, the show highlights these differences. Bayou Mansions folk are castoffs, castaways, citizens of a city that doesn’t want to believe they exist at all. Animals certainly prompted lively chatter. People left the theater talking about the privileged class, how we tend to blindness where unpleasant realities present themselves, how the best intentions sometimes fail, and how they weren’t sure where they’d left their cars in the parking garage.
And there was this garage elevator conversation among three women in their early 20s. Two of them, smartly turned out — head to pedicured toe — tried to dissuade their companion (much more casually attired) that they need not derail their plans with a gas station stop just so that she could avert dehydration with a Gatorade.
“You’re going to let me die of thirst?”
“You won’t die of thirst,” the Alpha Female replied.
“But I’ll get sick — all over your outfit.”
Alpha Female shrugged. “Then you’ll owe me $2000.”
“Who spends $2000 on a dress?” the other asked as the elevator doors opened on their floor.
Alpha Female stepped out, answering over her shoulder, “People with money do.”
Dehydrated? Suck on that reality check.
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