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Ladies’ nights
The Women on Top Theater Festival


The Sixth Annual Women on Top Theater Festival
Co-produced by Centastage and Underground Railway Theater. At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through March 31.


Asher’s Command

The Women on Top Theater Festival maintains that its purpose — thanks be to the Goddess — is not to present plays that are " restricted to feminist political statements " or women’s issues. " Women have more to say’ " than that, the organizers insist. Certainly they’re right about Marilyn Felt’s Asher’s Command, which, set against the intractable hatreds of the occupied West Bank, is mainly about men, their friendships, and their wars. Produced for the festival by the Nora Theatre Company and directed by Jeff Zinn, the play has won support from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays.

Suggested by an incident that took place in 1988 in a small West Bank village, Asher’s Command offers a bleak picture of what can happen to an inter-ethnic friendship undermined by war. Asher (Martin Berryman), a 17-year-old Israeli, ventures into the West Bank shortly after Israel has captured and occupied the territory in the 1967 war. After eating lunch in an Arab bakery, he finds he can’t start his car. He walks into the garage of Samir the Mechanic, an older Arab man with an outlook remarkably unsullied by hatred and vengefulness. Samir fixes Asher’s car — that is, he removes the potato some Arab guerrilla had wedged with murderous intent into the tailpipe.

An unlikely friendship springs up between the two men — though as Samir puts it, such a friendship can thrive only on a microcosmic level. " If we talk about cars and potatoes, we can be friends. ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Occupation’ are big words only for use by politicians. " The wise Samir becomes a teacher of life lessons, and as portrayed with naturalness and fluency by Gershon Eigner, he’s irresistible. But you wonder whether the playwright hasn’t manipulated us by depicting a man who’s entirely too good.

Asher, too. This inquiring teenager grows up, joins the army, and eventually rises to the rank of general, taking command of the Occupation. Eager to run the most humane operation possible, he is buffeted both by radical Arabs and by hard-line Jews. The friendship between Samir and Asher is put to the test by an incident involving Arab violence and the death of a Jewish child.

Felt weakens her premise by weighing in too clearly on the side of the Arabs. But she does make the point that friendship can bloom in the midst of mutual misunderstandings, mutual bloodshed, and mutual dogmatism. Always fragile, such friendship may be the only hope for peace.

— Ellen Pfeifer

The Ego Show

The association of ego with Freud is hardly lost on Nicole Pierce. Her late-night The Ego Show begins with the performer standing stark naked, but you sense she’d be just as comfortable reclining on a psychoanalyst’s couch. With strident tones and a blunt manner, waving a pointer at projections of her naked form that magnify the real thing, she catalogues the body parts that are sources of vexation.

But just when you think you’re in for another sardonic confessional about negative body image propped up by parenthetical anecdotes about mothers and boyfriends, there’s a twist. Claiming that the best way " to come to terms with something is to put it in motion, " Pierce launches into a movement circus that explores and skewers her main anxiety-fraught interests: art, sexuality, and the " love/family area. "

The eight pieces that follow suggest an odd blend of MTV meets Mad TV (and not just because two segments are videos). Writer, choreographer, and performer Pierce displays her capacity for graceful expression in a solo dance turn. But she’s also controlled when lampooning the rigid propriety of ballerinas. An antic ballet number suggests reform-school girls enduring punishment; the same surly ensemble don punk wigs and sequins for a bawdy, Monty Python–esque karaoke rendition of an AC/DC ditty.

Some of The Ego Show might be more effective if Eve Ensler hadn’t gotten there first. It’s just no longer shocking to listen to Pierce and Victor Tiernan recite an uninhibited inventory of body parts. Maybe the performers realize as much in view of their self-consciousness — which in this piece can hardly be chalked up to their nakedness.

—Liza Weisstuch

Flights of Fancy

The familiar idea that life imitates art rears its head in Suzanne Wingrove’s Flights of Fancy, even though the " art " at hand is the trashy romance novel. Bestselling author Jeffrey would argue that his formulaic novels are expressly intended as a refuge from life’s monotony. His seedy publisher, on the other hand, decides Jeffrey has hit a slump and assigns him an editor who believes his work could benefit from a dose of reality. This editor, Sarah, happens to be the publisher’s daughter, and her agenda is to prove herself and her principles to her sexist father.

A clash of titan beliefs ensues. Jeffrey is dogmatic in his conviction that readers thirst for his recipe of " romance, danger, and a dash of lust " ; Sarah, a radical feminist and closeted lesbian, is unyielding in her mission to reform the hopeless chauvinist and coax from him a work that doesn’t " enforce negative stereotypes of women. "

This battle gets played out not only in vociferous spats, which lapse into preachy invectives inspired by feminist treatises, but also through the chatty alter egos of Jeffrey and Sarah, which take the form of the principals in the novel’s love affair as it is written and rewritten. It’s a clever Woody Allen–esque contrivance that benefits from fine acting by Angela Meade and Mark Van Savage, under the direction of Carol Korty.

—Liza Weisstuch

Harmonious Proportions

Like the white scrims that hang at the back of the stage, gender preconceptions in Harmonious Proportions are thin veils that can be lifted to expose intriguing shadows. The series of shorts that make up this fast-paced yet elegantly contemplative movement/theater work examines gender identity by filtering it through classic texts from Medea to The Sound of Music.

A quartet of seasoned performers that includes Lisa Wolpe, artistic director of the LA Women’s Shakespeare Company, and Shakespeare & Company choreographer Susan Dibble presents excerpts from Shakespeare, Euripides, and Beckett in contexts that fly in the face of patriarchal values. The inventiveness of this festival-commissioned work, which is co-produced by Shakespeare & Company, lies in its presenting familiar classics while pulling the rug out from under traditional interpretations.

The disparate scenes run together like the verses of a song. In an autobiographical monologue, Wolpe speaks of playing Shakespeare’s men and her interest in " resonances. " She applies charcoal paint and an adhesive beard to morph into Shylock much the same way a vampy Merry Conway obligingly smears herself with mascara and lipstick, as though complying with the accompanying lyrics of Billie Holiday’s " All of Me. " The transformations these women pull out of their make-up boxes come across without indulgence in feminist clichés.

The same is true in pieces that are sly winks at the Comedy of Manners tradition. As Rodgers and Hammerstein ask " How do you solve a problem like Maria? " , the action tries to supply an answer, the performers wincing between spurious smiles, daintily maneuvering teacups, and squirming while feigning comfort in high heels. In another example of clothing as bondage, Sarah Hickler thrashes in agony in a crepe ball gown to a discordantly soothing " Ave Maria. " Such intended disharmony aside, Harmonious Proportions lives up to its name.

—Liza Weisstuch

A Night of Quickies

The festival’s program of one-act plays, the so-called " Quickies " (all directed by Paula Ramsdell), offers a range of humorous and poignant stories. Sheri Wilner’s The Unknown Part of the Ocean depicts a young mother (Debra Wise) struggling with the nausea of chemotherapy and with her eight-year-old daughter, Sophie (the remarkable Jesse McLeughlin), who can act out her worry only through vivid fantasy play. Sophie concocts a tale featuring her stuffed-animal collection of underwater creatures. Only gradually does the audience become aware of the story’s metaphorical connection with Sophie’s real-life predicament.

Donna Sorbello’s The Visit is highlighted by another child actor’s utterly natural performance. Young Gabe Goodman plays a Boy who asks endless questions of a troubled Young Woman. Not till the end does it become clear that the Woman is waiting in an abortion clinic and that the Boy is her vision of the child she may or may not terminate.

Kathleen Rogers’s House/Wife is the funny, nightmarish vision of anyone who has ever renovated a decayed historic house. Kate Nugent’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name is a not very persuasive, not very funny take on the unfriendliness of Boston residents and the crazy rudeness of Boston drivers.

Melinda Lopez’s Alexandros is a one-woman show in which a young girl recounts the bittersweet events of her Latina grandmother’s 80th birthday party and the death of the title character, the grandmother’s yappy little dog. Lopez nicely distinguishes among the various characters, but the play ends inconclusively.

— Ellen Pfeifer

Issue Date: March 14-21, 2002
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