Tucson Weekly: Theatrical Potluck (March 19

Theatrical Potluck

Damesrocket Theater Inaugurates Its New Home With A Liberating Dinner Party.
By Margaret Regan
THE FEMINIST artist Judy Chicago once upon a time envisioned a "Dinner Party" attended by women from throughout history. Chicago fashioned an embroidered place mat and ceramic dishes for each guest, who ranged from Joan of Arc to Hildegard of Bingen. Audiences for the gigantic 1979 piece, which traveled extensively through the U.S., were tempted to imagine the unimaginable conversations that might take place among these women, brought at last to the table.
British playwright Caryl Churchill had a similar idea for Top Girls, which dates from the same period. The frankly political play, performed by Damesrocket in its newly acquired theater, opens with a fancy dinner party hosted by Marlene, a London businesswoman celebrating her promotion to managing director of an employment agency. Marlene, fluidly played by Molly McKasson (who knows a thing or two about politics) has compiled an illustrious guest list.
Review There's Pope Joan (Cynthia Meier), the legendary female pope of the ninth century; Lady Nijo (Joy Lynn Pak), a 13th-century Japanese courtesan and Buddhist nun; Dull Gret (Jodi K. Cuneo), a 16th-century warrior-housewife; Patient Griselda (Kiley Jones DeGreen), the Chaucer character who gave up her children to prove her love for her husband; and finally, a real-life Victorian lady traveler, the plucky Isabella Bird (Toni Press-Coffman).
And what do these disparate ladies find to talk about? Plenty: They discourse on ambitions pinched, on children stolen, on delicious victories over patriarchy, however short-lived. For instance, Pope Joan, expansively played by Meier, tells how she relished her theological studies and power as pope, until a dalliance with an underling--and a pregnancy--revealed her as female. Director Caroline Reed allows the characters to talk as much as they want and they luxuriate in this freedom, abandoning all rules of etiquette, interrupting, talking at the same time, talking with mouths full. Their dialogue becomes a voluptuous tapestry of voices triumphantly unsilenced. It's not always easy for the theatergoer to follow their vocal groundswell, but this is a wonderful scene, flush with a liberating energy.
The rest of the play is quite different and much harder to like. The historical women transform into Marlene's ordinary co-workers, clients and family members, women who are coping--or not--with life's injustices. Churchill has a sharp eye for the contradictions of the Thatcher era, when a woman led England but promoted an ideology that Everyman, and Everywoman, ought to be able to rise up through work and ingenuity, economic and gender discrimination be damned. Though Marlene sees herself in the heroic tradition of her historical dinner guests, her own success depends on keeping other women down.
Freely accepting the unfair rules of the employment game, she asks job-seekers if they intend to marry and she cautions them against getting pregnant. And in her personal life, Marlene's financial success depends on her sister, a low-paid cleaning woman, picking up her family responsibilities. The message is clear: The way society is set up at the dawn of the 1980s, there's no way for women to enjoy both professional success and personal happiness.
Much of this material is tough going, particularly the scenes featuring Marlene's niece, Angie (Cuneo), a low-IQ tough--a vicious kid who secretly hurts her friend in the backyard and plots to bash her mum's head in with a brick. Cuneo plays this scary girl with fearsome dispatch. Churchill's purposes in creating a monster descendant for Marlene are unclear. The play's many scenes don't necessarily hold together dramatically, either, though the actors' strong ensemble performances are riveting. And the dinner party is a can't-miss.
THIS WEEKEND ALSO brings the final performances of Childsplay's Still Life with Iris, a children's play by Steven Dietz. The show runs in the afternoons on the Temple main stage, while Dietz' grown-up play, Rocket Man, plays there at night. Still Life is a colorful work, full of magic tricks and Childsplay's dependable stage wizardry.
The tale creates a fantasy world, Nocturno, where adults and kids alike spend the nights preparing all the world's delights, its sunrises and ladybugs and singing winds. The heroine, Iris (Katie McFadzen), is kidnapped from her loving Nocturno home, stripped of her memory and converted into a gilded plaything for the malign rulers of this universe, the materialistic Great Goods, played in robustly comic performances by D. Scott Withers and Cathy Dresbach.
Most of the play details Iris' determined quest to remember her past and retrieve her identity. At two hours, it's a bit longish for young children; and it has some peculiar bits that could prove terrifying to the very small. The girl is kidnapped by a smooth-talking man who urges her to remove her coat, and he neutralizes her mother by stripping the woman of her memory of her own child. (One's identity and memory are embedded in one's coat in Nocturno.) Thematically, it's all a bit muddled. Still, the show is more or less redeemed by a professional cast and engaging theatrics, and a glorious ending that pairs a sunrise with Mozart's Eine Kleine Nacht Musik.
Top Girls continues through Saturday, March 28, at Damesrocket Theater, 125 E. Congress St. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, with a 2 o'clock matinee and an 8 p.m. evening show on Sunday, March 22. Tickets are $10, with a $8 for seniors, students and artists. For reservations, call 623-7852.
Still Life with Iris continues this weekend only, with a 1 p.m. show Saturday, March 21, and a 2 p.m. show Sunday, March 22. All performances are at the Temple of Music and Art Holsclaw Theater, 330 S. Scott Ave. The Sunday show will be audio-described and ASL-interpreted. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for students, seniors and groups. For reservations, call 622-2823.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives