"The Vagina Monologues" gets performed a lot. Ever since Eve Ensler's collection of monologues, based on her interviews with over 200 women, toured around the country, groups everywhere have put it on as a fund- or awareness-raiser. That's okay, because it's great material. Hell, I learned some new things. It gets old, though.
But the current cast at Zachary Scott Theatre Center? Wow. There are only three women, aside from the nightly cameos of Austin VIPs, and they revive the show. So it's only fair to pay tribute to each.
Franchelle Stewart Dorn is a company member of the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the head of UT's acting department. It shows.
Her stage presence is indomitable and light one moment, when she adopts the persona of a young black woman describing her first lesbian experience, and my-god-chillingly small and frightened as a victim of a rape camp. Every word is tinged with classically trained variations and sensibilities combined with enthusiasm.
Lauren Lane teaches at Texas State University, but you might remember her as C.C. Babcock, Fran Drescher's blonde nemesis on "The Nanny." Forget that character.
Lane has the timing of a standup comic, improvising her way through the audience's inevitable laughter to draw it out as long as possible.
But she also, for my money, has the softest touch of the show. She gets that the script, funny as it is, also is sad. We're laughing only because the facts at hand are too outrageous to avoid it. Watch her during her cast mates' "funny" pieces. There's the slightest twinge of pain in her slow smiles.
Karen Kuykendall was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame last summer. She's been a mainstay on Austin stages for years now, and brings her experience to bear in creating a persona that has Woody Allen's wry Jewish comedy, but with confidence.
She exudes a sort of calm wit that, if she weren't so often voicing characters of older women only now discovering or remembering the discovery of their sexuality, would be intimidating as all hell. You get the feeling you wouldn't want to run into her in a dark corner of a cocktail party.
But too often Kuykendall is assigned parts that seem to highlight the humor along the lines of "Hey, that woman who could be my grandma just said 'vagina' and, whoa, [insert a list of phrases I can't print here]."
And that's my main problem with the play. The actresses are all fantastic and could carry any of the monologues on a blank stage with no assistance, but the production intrudes on their performances.
The simultaneously spoken chorus of a rant about periods comes off as artificial and doesn't get the planned laughs. Soft, colored lighting gives ZACH's Arena Stage the feeling of a jazz club. But then, for some reason, that soft jazz or classic light pop is played over monologues as a transition.
It gives the emotional monologues the feeling of the altar call at the end of a come-to-Jesus Billy Graham speech. And you worry that the hilarious speeches are being hurried along to avoid being escorted off the Oscar's stage.
Some of that, especially Kuykendall's roles, may because of Ensler's involvement. Most of Kuykendall's monologues are, after all, based on older women. That may be why the seemingly ubiquitous showings of "The Vagina Monologues" get tiring.
The material is genius on stage, but you get the feeling Ensler may be playing fast and loose with the material she collected by putting monologues in the first-person that are only "based" on her interviews.
Ensler admits as much when she quotes one lesbian saying that the monologue she inspired doesn't capture her essence.
"It's not that I didn't like men. I just loved women." And wouldn't the tale of the rape victim be at least as moving in her own words as in the hyper-poetic metaphor of her vagina as her village?
That's not to knock anyone's performance, though. It's just caution to people about using or viewing "Vagina Monologues" to raise awareness as if it were non-fiction. See this production because it's great as a play. You may never find a better collection of Austin's actresses.
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