PRapture, Blister, Burn
ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $41 and up. Runs Tues.–Sun. Ends Aug. 11.
High-achieving feminist academics brought low make comedic targets nearly as reliable as tight rich geezers did in Moliere’s day. But does that mean they’ve come a long way, baby? Catherine (Kristen Potter)—the 42-year-old uber-intellectual protagonist of Gina Gionfriddo’s sitcom-funny idea play—isn’t so sure. Yeah, she’s invited to pontificate all over the world; and sure, the money and deference paid to her are swell; but where’s the love? Where’s the fulfillment? Egad, she’s even starting to think anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly got some of it right. Her mother’s heart attack prompts a return home to rethink her choices; the visit also has her checking on former grad-school roommate Gwen (Kathryn Van Meter), who chose the path of homemaking and motherhood with her husband Don (Jeffrey Frace), Catherine’s old boyfriend.
Potter (Or, and Photograph 51) is a good choice for Catherine; she has a knack for playing smart, rapier-tongued women in ways that don’t make us hate them. Don, now a college dean, allows Catherine to teach a course in her mother’s living room, which conveniently allows a survey of feminist history peppered with so many jokes that many get lost in the laughs that precede them (a nifty problem to have). That Catherine’s only two students are Gwen and her subversive babysitter Avery (bodacious Mariel Neto) betrays Gionfriddo’s background in TV writing, where storycrafting economy trumps plausibility as long as it’s funny enough. The ideas batted around are deeper than our investment in the characters; exposition abounds; and underdeveloped Don often seems a thankless punching bag. Nonetheless, the multigenerational lady-bonding is often hilarious. Catherine’s mother Alice (Priscilla Lauris) periodically brings the septuagenarian perspective and pilfers laughs like a demonic fairy. Avery’s attempts to explain the term “hooking up” to her elders, and her likening of porn-powered solo sex to Google Maps (“Once you start getting directions from Google, it seems like a huge hassle to unfold a map”) brought the house down.
The Freaky Friday-style life swap that Gwen and Catherine contemplate isn’t exactly fresh, yet that doesn’t make the absurd sight of Catherine and Don galumphing around the sectional in their skivvies any less enjoyable. (Anita Montgomery directs the hijinks.) Theatrical elements, like women, can be simultaneously smart and cliched and funny and irritating and cool. End of class. Margaret Friedman
PTrouble in Mind
Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, 201 Mercer St., 726-5190. $20–$50. schedule varies; see intiman.org. Ends Sept. 15.
Few theatergoers today have heard of Alice Childress (1916–1994), the author of A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, but she was also a playwright who won an Obie for her 1955 Trouble in Mind. Plans for a transfer to Broadway didn’t work out, perhaps because white producers didn’t like her depiction of their world. Now director Valerie Curtis-Newton is determined to redress Childress’ relative obscurity. Skillfully, movingly, entertainingly, shatteringly, Trouble catalogs the charades and compromises (i.e., sellings-out) demanded of “negro” stage professionals trying to make it on Broadway. Intiman’s splendid rendering marries beautiful acting to the powerful architecture of a masterly, laser-sharp script that ricochets between hope and heartache.
Thinking she has finally cleared the hurdle between mammy roles and real acting, Wiletta Mayer arrives for her first day of Broadway rehearsal looking and feeling like a million bucks. Tracy Michelle Hughes nails Wiletta’s complex mix of intelligence, ambition, and impending dread as the destructively narrow vision of producer/director Al Manners (Tim Gouran) falls like toxic rain over his talented cast. Much mordant humor comes when certain black cast members accept Manners’ humiliating drill as the cost of doing business, fulfilling his stereotyping demands. Sheldon (G. Valmont Thomas) mimes whittling a stick and puzzles over his lines’ inscrutable dialect, his eyes made bulbous and comically aflame. Meanwhile, diva Millie (Shontina Vernon) must play a maid who perfunctorily cries “Lawd have mercy!” We laugh because Sheldon and Millie laugh at their roles, but it’s bitter hilarity.
Tension accrues as Manners’ white-penned script—about a lynching—falls apart, undone by its internal contradictions and falsehoods. Wiletta’s desire to change one tiny element of the script becomes a do-or-die compulsion (professionally, at least), forcing a well-earned dramatic standoff with Manners. Cut your fingernails short, as they will likely dig hard into your palms during the appropriately wrenching stretches, especially as echoes of the George Zimmerman verdict reverberate. But mainly what is felt here is Childress’ indignation over the waste of black talent. An actress with the American Negro Theater during the ’40s, Childress later became a best-selling novelist. Intiman successfully argues that she left an important stage legacy, too. Margaret Friedman
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