Hair Today . . .

Review of Steel Magnolias, Music Theatre of Connecticut

The first thing to take in about the production of Steel Magnolias at Music Theater of Connecticut is how Jessie Lizotte’s set design has opened up the playing space, creating a beauty salon with several work areas, a reception desk, a waiting area, a hair dryer, and two doors, one inner and one to the outside. The shop is run by Truvy (Raissa Katona Bennett) in what was formerly a carport on her property and it provides an isle of sanity for a coterie of women in the town who drop in regularly to get their hair done and to chat about whatever might be going on in the town of Chinquapin, Louisiana.

Directed by Pamela Hill, this fine ensemble cast captures the rhythms of everyday talk in Robert Harling’s script and the movements about the shop, as side conversations and common discussions join, overlap or conflict, is vividly enacted. Which is a good thing because all the action takes place in the shop and it’s important we feel as at home there as these women do. There’s nothing claustrophobic or phony about Truvy’s. It is an impressive and effective space in which to watch this discursive comedy-drama unfold.

M’Lynn (Kaia Monroe), Annelle (Rachel Rival), Truvy (Raissa Katona Bennett), Shelby (Andrea Lynn Green) in MTC Mainstage production of Steel Magnolias (photo by Heather Hayes)

Taking place in two Acts, each with two scenes, the play’s chattiness provides a context for four key moments in the life of Shelby Eatenton (Andrea Lynn Green), the daughter of M’Lynn (Kaia Monroe) who is one of the mainstays at Truvy’s, along with Clairee Belcher (Cynthia Hannah), widow of the late mayor, and Ouiser Bourdeaux (Kirsti Carnahan), the local curmudgeon. In the first scene, we see preparations for Shelby’s marriage that afternoon and meet, as do the women, Annelle Dupuy-DeSoto, a new hairdresser Truvy hired more from pity than need. The young woman, it emerges, has been abandoned by her husband and is living at a rooming-house. Soon she is welcome as one of group, and changes in her status—from abandoned to engaged to expectant mother—mark the passage of time over the course of the play.

Clairee (Cynthia Hannah), foreground, Annelle (Rachel Rival), Ouiser (Kirsti Carnahan), background in MTC Mainstage production of Steel Magnolias (photo by Heather Hayes)

In that first scene we learn that Shelby has diabetes when she undergoes a hyperglycemic episode, which is dramatic but easily coped with. The main tension seems to be between Shelby’s “get on with life” attitude and her mother’s pricklier concerns. Monroe makes M’Lynn seem something of a wet blanket, more apt to be gently sarcastic rather than merry. The merriest is Clairee, who will do just about anything to get a rise out of Ouiser, her foil. Carnahan and Hannah do a lot to keep things lively. As Truvy, Bennett’s Dolly Parton-style hairdo makes her look brassier than she is; there’s a genuine openness in her dealings with Rachel, who, as played by Rival, is very sweet but not that bright. The main figure is Shelby, and Andrea Lynn Green, who played the cunning Maggie the Cat in MTC’s sharp Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last season, plays her as a young woman with a lot on her mind, clearly used to being the young one doted on by these older ladies. The big reveal at the end of Act One shows us that she will live her own life, even if it kills her.

Shelby (Andrea Lynn Green) in MTC Mainstage production of Steel Magnolias (photo by Heather Hayes)

In Act Two we learn of the consequences of Shelby’s decision to have a child despite her doctor’s warnings and against M’Lynn’s wishes. The first scene of Act Two, a year and a half since the end of Act One, seems to mark life as usual, except that Shelby, as everyone learns to their shock and concern, needs her mother in a very particular way, and that creates a spotlight for M’Lynn as she continues to be essential in her daughter’s life. Green makes Shelby’s exit touching as she manages to think of others while facing major surgery. The final act gives M’Lynn the focus as she has to accept her daughter’s outlook and believe it is for the best. Monroe keeps M’Lynn tightly wound so that her breakdown is the more powerful, the kind of letting go and recovery that only happens with trusted friends.

Truvy (Raissa Katona Bennett), M’Lynn (Kaia Monroe) in MTC Mainstage production of Steel Magnolias (photo by Heather Hayes)

Steel Magnolias is noted, I suspect, for its ability to bring out tears and hankies. Truvy says that one of the best emotions is “laughter through tears” and that’s the feeling the play aims for. While only M’Lynn and Shelby are family, these six women provide a family-like space for each other, a context of wisecracks and pep-talks and shared confidences that allows for both laughter and tears. M’Lynn, who the others think of as tough, can only go so soft; Clairee, the joker, has to find something to make the others laugh; Ouiser, who has “been in a very bad mood for forty years,” can’t go too touchy-feely. It’s a fine line of playing as cast in the little company they have created, with Truvy as the one who, no matter what’s going down, has to help the ladies find a look to meet it with. It’s a play about life, loss, love, and the importance of familiar routine played to perfection with this perfectly chosen cast.

Steel Magnolias
By Robert Harling
Directed by Pamela Hill

Scenic Design: Jessie Lizotte; Lighting Design: RJ Romeo; Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Sound Design: Will Atkin; Prop Design: Merrie Deitch; Hair Design: Peggi De La Cruz; Stage Manager: Jim Schilling

Cast: Raissa Katona Bennett, Kirsti Carnahan, Andrea Lynn Green, Cynthia Hannah, Kaia Monroe, Rachel Rival

Music Theatre of Connecticut
November 8-24, 2019

Theatrical Extremity

Playing for its second weekend in an unlikely performance space—The Institute Library at 847 Chapel Street—is a stripped-down production of Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe.  Staged by The Young Mechanics Theatre Ensemble, in its inaugural production, the play is both intimate and enigmatic.  Consisting of only three characters—a Director (Jeremy Funke), his Assistant (Kaia Monroe), and a Protagonist (Brian Riley)—the dramatic comedy seems as if it is primarily intended as a meditation upon theater. We see the Assistant lead the Protagonist onto a “plinth” or “pedestal” (actually a chair) in a stage space; he’s gowned in black, looking somewhat priestly, hobbled, drooling.  The Director proceeds to put him through his paces, demanding the Assistant remove clothes, alter his pose, whiten his skin, looking, we suppose, for the right image to express his idea.  We’re clearly in a place where “humanity” (whatever we might conceive that to be) can be compressed into one forlorn figure made to bend or stretch at the autocratic whims of a dictatorial Director.  The Assistant at times hesitates, but gamely makes a note of each alteration the Director calls for.

The handbill informs us that the play is “for Vaclav Havel,” and, since Havel was himself a playwright, the play might read as a wry reflection on how potentially dehumanizing theater can be for its participants.  It’s to the credit of the play’s director (as opposed to the Director in the play) James Leaf that the element of dramatic commentary is never lost sight of.  We’re always aware that what we’re witnessing is not far removed from the grueling rehearsal procedures of theater, to say nothing of the fact that the Protagonist is also always an Actor.  A man who has actually to stand silently on a chair for the play’s duration (a half hour, tops) and endure what must be endured.

And yet, Havel, who died last year, was also an important Czech political leader, imprisoned at the time the play was written.  With this in mind, it’s easy also to read the Protagonist as a man being oppressed by a regime that dictates how he must move, or stand, or comport himself.

As the Director, Jeremy Funke sucks on a cigar, demands a light frequently, is impatient and distracted but not wholly uncommunicative.  He expresses quite well the feeling that this is the Director’s project and his task is to satisfy his audience—his line about having “them all on their feet” suggests he feels he knows best what the audience wants.  His Assistant, Kaia Monroe, pleads a little for her touches—she has the Protagonist in a gown and a hat—but doggedly pursues the Director’s vision, as an Assistant must.  When the Director withdraws for a bit, her frenzy of cleaning his chair, after she had collapsed into it briefly, expresses the emotional toll of her work, and also her status between the silent Protagonist and the demanding Director: she has liberty of movement even if she has to retract most of what she does of her own will.  As the Protagonist, Brian Kiley is superb.  He maintains the right degree of dereliction so common with Beckett’s heroes, and, while looking on at the Assistant at the chair, manages a mute expression of inner revelation that strongly suggests a rapport.  In the end his gaze off into the distance and what we read there carries much of the play’s ultimate meaning.

Beckett is always a wonder in how much he can convey with so little, and Catastrophe is suggestive on many levels.  The title itself can mean, as it generally does, a “disaster,” typically a natural kind, but in its more theatrical meaning it refers to the turn toward a play’s conclusion—the happy outcome of comedy, the disastrous outcome of tragedy.  This relatively late play of Beckett’s is perhaps somewhat unique in seeming to offer a deliberate comic catastrophe, though not unequivocally.  The final action of the Protagonist, in appearing stoical, defiant, or at least self-willed, can be construed as a message of political hope for the fortunes of dissidents like Havel, or it could also, in the manner of Beckettian irony, allude to the comedy of such hopes and assertions in the face of the surrounding conditions.

In other words, it’s the sort of play you have to make up your own mind about, and to do that you have to see it.  And you should:

Performances will be held at 8:00 p.m. at the Institute Library, 847 Chapel Street, March 23, 24, 30, and 31. $5 suggested donation. Because of limited seating, reservations are strongly recommended. To make reservations, please email home@institutelibrary.org and specify the night you wish to attend and the number of people in your party.  Each performance concludes with refreshments and a salon-style discussion.

Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe Directed by James Leaf

Produced by The Young Mechanics Theatre Ensemble: Will Baker, Megan Black, Jeremy Funke, Alice-Anne Harwood, James Leaf, Kaia Monroe, Brian Riley, and Elisabeth Sacks

March 23, 24, 30, 31 The Institute Library 847 Chapel Street, New Haven

A Play of One's Own

Last Friday and Saturday nights The Wicked Wolf in New Haven hosted the inaugural Second Sex Play Fest ("second sex" as in the title of Simone de Beauvoir's famous classic, NOT the second "sex play fest").  Under the auspices of the New Haven Theater Company, the project was conceived to address the lack of significant parts for actresses in the dramatic literature. According to Producing Director Kaia Monroe, of Southern Connecticut State University, in the last three Broadway seasons thirty-two plays were produced; of the two hundred fifty-nine characters in those plays, only seventy-one were female.  The Second Sex Fest seeks to address the disparity by producing a new works festival in which all the characters in the all the plays are female, and by publishing an anthology of the winning works so that the parts can be made available to acting classes and theater groups hungry for female-based drama.

So, what were the five plays produced, out of the forty submitted, like?  Well, for starters, it was a bit odd, perhaps, that all the chosen plays were written by men.  I say "perhaps" because, while I don't believe characters of a certain gender can only be convincingly written by authors of that gender, it may seem a bit one-sided to give only male playwrights the limelight.  Be that as it may, one must accept the judgment of the choosing committee that these were the best of the bunch.

As roles for women, the plays seemed mainly to offer caricatures: Erik Christian Hanson's Jean Awareness gave us two women who had been busted for protesting the Oscars on behalf of Jean Arthur, an Oscar-less actress famous for screwball comedies and regular gal roles; the actresses, Kerry Tattar and Bethany Fitzgerald, were quite engaging in parts that called for broadly conceived coarseness to bring out comically the women's emotional engagement with their heroine; D. Richard Tucker's A Very Lovely Dress, the only play that wasn't a comedy, in which a very maternal tailor (Elizabeth Reynolds) converses with a young girl (Susannah Resnick) selected to represent her people at a public ceremony -- the drama of the piece centered on the anxiety of a woman having to present herself as emblematic at such occasions; Jack Rushen's Jane in Hell in which Amanda Ratti played the appealing and promiscuous Jane who, in hell, has to periodically enact disco moves (because she said she hated disco) and who welcomes a former male sex partner Ira (Adrienne Brown) who has been condemned to endure eternity as a female while spied upon by his Jewish mother (Judy Lenzi-Magoveny) no less; John C. Davenport's Tough Love in which two manly biker girls, Tanya (Kaia Monroe) and Patty (Hallie Martinson) assert their heteroness the way manly male bikers might and Tanya shocks herself and Patty by deciding to become a wife; and Michael Ragozzino's Everything You Own in a Box to the Right, a political satire in which a Republican candidate Martha Margaret (Margaret Mann) finds herself catapulted into the big time where ambition dictates she align herself with the ultra-right wing aspects of the party as comically enacted by a trio of ideologues (Kelly Boucher, Patricia McCarthy, Barbara Hensel) sent to counsel her, over the protests of her more moderate assistant (Sandra Rodriguez).

For the most part the plays moved briskly, as dialogue-driven situations that could be quickly grasped.  Rather than full-scale productions, these were more like workshop presentations, script-in-hand.  Most of the appeal came from exchanges in which the actresses could bounce off one another verbally -- as for instance the great comic timing in Tough Love -- or from moments of physical comedy, as for instance Adrienne Brown having to disco while enacting a man in a tearful woman's body, or the priceless moment when Kelly Boucher, as a faux Southerner, coached Margaret Mann and Sandra Rodriguez in how to grab their balls.

Everything You Own, directed by T. Paul Lowry (who kept the comedy crackling in NHTC's production of the all-male play Glengarry Glen Ross last spring), was the most ambitious play presented.  Its portrayal of political machinations voiced and enacted entirely by women was a telling choice in the age of Hillary and Sarah, but the script could have used some trimming as it rambled a bit and the transformation of Martha into a spit-perfect mouther of Tea Party truisms, while sustained by an undercurrent of anger, only offered skewering of the GOP with no real surprises -- unlike, for instance, Jane in Hell 's introduction of a stereotypical Jewish mother into hell, which included her shock at Jesus' "I told you so" smile when she faced his judgment.

All in all, the offerings demonstrated a few points: male characters aren't necessay for successful plays, and plays with all female characters needn't be Soaps full of Oprahesque uplift.  If the plays still fell short of giving us complex female characters, well, there's always next year.