Prolific
author Joyce Carol Oates has written this series of ten monologues by a variety
of women in a desperate search for love. Some are sketchy, others are almost mini
plays, but all are powerful statements about women’s confused relationships
with men. There is some onstage nudity but Oates is mainly concerned with
revealing emotional nakedness. Director Gloria Gifford cleverly has them all as
party attendees, in a blood-red room, where they share their stories with us.
Genevieve
Joy is the hostess writing checks to save a world she despises; Cynthia San
Luis is riveting as a teacher sexually misinterpreting the advances of a boy of
15; Sabrina Won is a total loon waiting for Armageddon; Abigail Kochunas is a receptionist
whose façade hides a hidden rage, and Davia King is a wife seeing her husband
weeping and realizing it’s over.
Pamela
Renae is moving as a happily pregnant women with a malignant talking fetus; Kelly
Musslewhite is delightful as a featherbrain married to a serial killer (see
today’s headlines); Kasia Pilewicz is trying for invisibility thru bulimia, and
Leana Chavez, Raven Bowens and Nancy Chavez are disfigured with love bites. Most
impressive is Jade Warner as a murdered stripper who walks us through her
terror and asks the question, ‘why do you hate us?’ that female victims of
violence ask everywhere.
Produced
by Chad Doreck, Lauren Plaxco and Jade Warner for Jamaica Moon Productions and
Ggc Players. At: T.U. Studios, 10943 Camarillo St. (off Lankershim), North Hollywood.
Tickets at 310-366-5505 or www.tix.com.
Also in the December issue of NOT BORN YESTERDAY.
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