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Frank Talk]
OUT & ABOUT
By Diane Frank
ACT A LADY - a play by Jordan Harrison
These days, when I learn of a play or musical, or movie featuring crossdressing,
I inwardly groan and roll my eyes. I know I have a duty to go and dutifully
chuckle at the same tired jokes about men in dresses all the while bearing up
under the gaze of the mundane folk wondering how I am breaking the fourth wall
and showing up sitting next to them in the audience. Still, there was “I am my
Own Wife,” which was far off the well-worn track. And now there is “Act a
Lady.” “Act a Lady” takes every bit of the comedy and drama we know so
well about all this fuss about clothing and gender and turns it inside out and
upside down in a fast-paced, literate and intimate romp that can leave you close
to tears and laughing at the same time. Ably performed in the shoebox
Convergence-Continuum theatre, this show is a must-see!
In 1927 the Wattleburg Elks Club prepares to perform period drama in Marie
Antoinette drag as a benefit for toy-less children at Christmas, thus launching
the dramatist’s delight, a play within a play. Miles, wistfully played by C-C
founder and artistic director Clyde Simon, is a dreamer who escapes dreary
mid-west convention through acting in the Elk club’s benefits. His wife
Dorothy, played by the feisty and brittle Lucy Bredeson-Smith, is the local
accordion teacher with a penchant for venting her frustration through little
near-improvised songs. She is horrified at the idea of the men folk borrowing
her “lacies” to prance around in public, and quickly punctures the claim
that it’s just for the kids. The guys aren’t doing it just for the kids;
they’re going to have fun. That horrifies her even more of course, why should
a man have fun when he acts a lady. She doesn’t!
Of course this is innocent 1920’s fun, when gay still meant happy. Except it
doesn’t, as is both foreshadowed and revealed later, when Casper reifies his
long repressed dreams in the role of ingénue and can’t and won’t put the
genie back in the bottle. We can ignore the conflation of gay with crossdressing
due to the period setting of the piece. The play also conforms to the old notion
that men learn something important when they walk around in high heels for a
while, but what is learned here isn’t just by the men, and it is in no way the
conventional, patronizing “now I know what the little woman goes through”
tripe. Acting is dangerous; it lets out stuff we keep buried. It costs
something, both to the players and the audience, when they are well and properly
taken outside their accustomed habits and haunts. Each of the characters has a
revelation about themselves, and suggests to the audience the possibilities that
lie buried within. And if this sounds too serious, don’t fret. All this
revelation takes place at a blisteringly directed (by Arthur Grothe) madcap pace
that combines period farce with 20’s silent movie melodrama and stretches the
actors’ abilities to clearly render the exotically and lushly worded script.
Three other players complete the cast of six: The character True, played by Wes
Shofner, is well delivered as an irresistible lady’s man whose self confidence
is shaken when Lorna, a make-up artist returned home from Hollywood (the soulful
Denise Astorino), finds him attractive in powder and paint and later by
Casper’s mawkish attraction to him. Last, but not least is the imported
director of the show, Zina, played ala Dietrich by the ferocious Lauri Hammer.
Zina it seems makes a career of putting on drag shows in the backwaters of the
country, making a vocation of bending genders and minds.
One of the interesting devices that blurs the lines of gender is applied towards
the end of the play. Each of the male leads, semi-dressed in period costume has
a dialogue with his male self, played by one of the women actresses. (What was
it Victoria said about a woman playing a man playing a woman?) The device is
made trickier because to some extent those impressions then seem to rub off on
the female characters the women play. It’s quite a sight to behold.
Located in the Tremont district on the near west side, C-C Theatre seats only
50, in a space smaller than a McMansion’s rec room, or even more modest living
rooms. Certainly, the forced proximity brings us closer to events of the
evening. But more to the point: seating is limited and the run closes on October
20th. In addition, the web site has just announced that Saturday, Oct. 13 and
Thursday, Oct. 18 are SOLD OUT. Act soon, or wait uncertainly to see if some
other theatre company will have the daring to put this play on.
Address:
The Liminis
2438 Scranton Road
Cleveland, OH 44113
(216) 687.0074
http://www.convergence-continuum.org
Book of Life
My gentle readers may remember that I've drawn a veil over talking about my life
at temple and elsewhere out of concern for the privacy of those groups. I would
like to describe something that happened recently at temple however.
We have just finished celebrating the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashana (New Years)
and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). As a matter of trying to keep our identity
since we've joined a larger congregation, our little LGBT Chavurah (fellowship)
tries to sit together in larger services, in the same way that friends and
family like to sit together. Arriving just a tad late (parking is always crazy
for the High Holy Days), I found I couldn't sit with the main group. My friend
Janice decided she'd come sit next to me, so I wouldn't be alone at the service.
The only two seats we could find together were at the very back of the
room...which was fine for me, being tall, but a sacrifice for her, being rather
short. As we stood and sat at various times in the service she glanced to the
right to see out a window.
"We were meant to sit here," she said. "I don't know if you'll be
able to see this, but look at that big tree, I see a metaphor there." So
the next time we rose, I looked to the side at the tree. It was a large, healthy
tree full of deep green leaves at the end of summer...and there amidst all the
green was one, single bright orange-red leaf. And, that was how she saw me. So I
wish all a Happy New Year from my calendar, and a wish that you may be inscribed
in the book of life.
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