Written by:
Colleen McCaffrey
» Order
this Issue of Curve:
17#10
Our December issue gives you The Best of Lesbian Regional Theatre by highlighting the women behind the scenes: crew, actors, directors and playwrights. You can’t have the main course and not wash it down with dessert, so here’s a little something to refresh your thespian palate and a toast to some of the best regional plays themselves and the theater houses who hosted them. Bon appétit.
Pulp (About Face Theatre)
Much like the lesbian pulp-fiction of the ’50s, writer Patricia Kane brings sultry Sapphos out of the closets and into the streets; then back to the sheets. World War II vet Terry Logan gets booted from the service for conduct unbecoming a woman, so she brings her conduct to the local lesbian watering hole, The Well, where the sexual innuendos are about as heavy as the smoke and jazz befitting of the era. Sporting an original cast with the exception of Kane herself, Pulp was a clever, racy, parody of the cult novels we love to loathe.
Caged Dames (Hell in a Handbag Productions)
New songs, old cast: the return of Caged Dames was a highly acclaimed, popular demand that hit the mark. Based on the 1950s prison noir films, specifically Caged , Chicago’s David Cerda gives us the sadistic matron, the homicidal housewife and your favorite working girl with a heart bigger than her brain.
Alice in Bed (Trap Door Theatre)
Absurdity, comedy, and complexity are the glue that hold reality to fantasy in Susan Sontag’s unconventional take on matters of mind versus body. Alice James, the eclectic brilliant sister to geniuses William and Henry James, may be an invalid but she’s also a master escape artist. The infamous climactic scene of Alice’s mental version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party include guests Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson, among others. Sontag’s intellectual play examines tensions between life’s experiences and the physical and gender limitations that can hinder them.
Lost & Found: The Anniversary Series (Queer Soup Theatre)
Five years and counting, this Boston-based performance group celebrated its anniversary with what other than a series of queer plays about anniversaries. From lesbian putt-putt to Hurricane Katrina aftermath, Queer Soup delivers a fine taste of personal and emotional topics, gender blind casts, and a mission statement claiming to use “laughter to smuggle ideas across society’s borders.” You can only hope your five-year anniversary is as enlightening and entertaining. Plays showcased were: Magillicutti (Renèe C. Farster), Paris (Lyralen Kaye), October (Ginger Lazarus), The Sanzibell Putt-Putt Rally (Jess Martin), Gutting (Karen “Mal” Malme), and Honey, I’m So Lonesome, I Don’t Know What To Do (Betsy Phillips).
Stop Kiss (Raven Theatre)
Award winning playwright Diana Son touches on the tenderness and lust that drives two female friends to examine their mutual attraction and that moment of recognition and action where the attraction turns to intimacy. Juxtaposing desire and fear, love and violence and hedonism with possible homicide, who knew homos could be so dramatic?
Staircase (Theatre Rhinoceros)
One of the first gay plays to tackle Broadway, it’s appropriate that the United States’ longest running professional queer theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros, is presenting it. Clever comedy and witty complexity are what have garnered Staircase the reputation of being dubbed the gay Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Set in the politically charged year of 1966, Charlie and Harry have been together for years, which seems to phase no one other than the police.
No Clean Getaway (City at Peace)
City at Peace, a non-profit organization that uses performing arts as a way to empower teens by teaching non-violent and creative ways to attack injustice and keep the peace,
presents a play about the coming of age. A group of teenagers attend an open mic and are enlightened to the fact that the path they’re on is not the only option in life. At the crossroads, they are forced to choose between the societal norms they have learned so well—gender roles, drug use and personal relationships—that have been instilled by the adults, institutions and mentors they have grown to know and trust. The teens face the idea that behaviors perpetuate problems and learn of opportunities to break habits and change outcomes.
The Oldest Profession (Bailiwick Reporatory)
Misery loves company and in the opening of each of this play’s five acts a handful of old women working for commission on the right angles of the city, reminisce of pre-Reagan years and commiserate the metaphorical outsourcing of what it’s like to lose business to younger, strung out, bustier competition. Each profession has its woes and the oldest hustle is no exception. Production and direction add to the success of Paula Vogel’s only structured play, and while the comedic highlights smooth the bumps of despair, it does little for the signs of aging and the inevitable change these women are facing.
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