Most of us are familiar with autobiographical solo plays that reek of self-indulgence; those precious, cloying, bore-a-thons created and performed by people so convinced that their lives are fascinatingly, uniquely noteworthy that they don’t realize their mundane memories are boring the snot out of the rest of us.
But just when you’re ready to set a match to the whole genre comes a show like “Blue Collar Diaries,” Michelle Myers Berg’s keenly observed and deftly executed story of growing up in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood.
Berg does plenty of things right in this expanded version of a play she first created for the 2007 Minnesota Fringe Festival. The strength of that original production carries through in the current staging at the History Theatre: Berg fundamentally understands that she is not the most interesting part of her own story.
Oh, she pops up judiciously here and there — demonstrating the distinctly urban style of St. Paul Central High School cheerleaders in the late 1970s (cue the P-Funk All-Stars!) or showing how the glow-in-the-dark rosary she received as a First Communion gift functioned on levels both sacred and profane.
But Berg is more interested in telling the story of her working-class neighborhood through the eyes of the people who lived there: The mothers who folded laundry by day and schlepped drinks at O’Gara’s by night to keep the household going. The n’er-do-well young men who hung out in pool halls wearing their Britannia jeans and spun tales of floating down the Apple River and scoring concert tickets from KDWB. Or the African-American bakery worker who quietly transcended race by distributing day-old doughnuts from his job to clamorous white kids.
Changing characters by swapping out headgear and changing the pitch and intonation of her voice, Berg provides an affectionate but unsentimental cross-section of her neighborhood. At the center of her story is her father, a Korean War veteran who raised eight kids on a machinist’s salary, kept his promises but seldom talked about his own difficult memories.
In lesser hands, “Blue Collar Diaries” would be a story about how Berg overcame growing up poor under the thumb of what she describes as a “scary dad.” But this is the work of a grownup person and a mature artist: She neither wallows in the perceived deficiencies of her own growing-up years nor does she congratulate herself for emerging from those years whole and healthy.
Instead, she tries to understand the very different wants, needs and desires of a past generation, and to give that understanding some contemporary context. It’s a noble undertaking, and an entertaining one that earns guffaws, sighs of nostalgia and small moments of thought-provoking wonder along the way.
The show isn’t flawless. The garrulous Berg occasionally stretches too far for writerly imagery that ends up ringing wrong in her mouth. Though director Suzy Messerole keeps things moving along and modulates the show’s many moods well, she doesn’t manage uniformly crisp transitions, giving the production some jerky moments.
Those, however, are minor criticisms. “Blue Collar Diaries” is a story of a specific time and place, but its energy and its heart resonate far beyond the borders of Merriam Park.
Theater critic Dominic P. Papatola can be reached at 651-228-2165.
What: “Blue Collar Diaries”
When: Through April 19
Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
Tickets: $30-$20
Information: 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com
Capsule: Clear-eyed, top-notch storytelling.
