“If buying American doesn’t matter to you, then I don’t know what else I can say,” says Crystal, a persuasive young Saturn saleswoman, in Laura Marks’ Off-Broadway play “Bethany.” Crystal (played by America Ferrera, Emmy Award winner for “Ugly Betty”) lives in a suburb wiped out by foreclosures and will do anything to make a sale and put her life back together. At one point, she smiles that smile that not even Betty’s famous braces could hide and suggests to a potential customer that buying a Saturn will help him get laid, a tactic normally reserved for Jaguar salespeople.
Speaking of riding in style, “Bethany” playwright Laura Marks is being groomed for greatness by the likes of Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman (Marks is a 2012 Juilliard alumna), and John Guare, who chose “Bethany” as a runner-up for Yale’s David C. Horn Prize. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, educated at Indiana University, the Midwesterner is settling comfortably in New York as a New Dramatists resident playwright (2012-2019). And just in time. “Bethany” opened this month at City Center (produced by The Women’s Project).