Review: Early Girl by Paladin Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Charlie Stites is a big guy with a big heart whose most recent stage outings have been as braggarts and sexual boasters. He counters that image somewhat with his intent to right the acting balance between the sexes by staging this drama by actress Carolyn Kava, done to respectful New York reviews in the mid-1980s.
Stites writes in the program that he was struck "by the dearth of interesting parts available for [women]," making "the ladies of Austin theatre. . . an underused resource."
Without judging that declaration, I can confirm that he and his Paladin Theatre did recruit a houseful of sensitive and impressive female actors for Early Girl. Some I had seen before -- Wendy Zavaleta in striking roles in musical theatre, Molly Karrasch at the Austin Playhouse in several roles, including a superb turn as Rita in Educating Rita, and Karen Alvarado in well defined, deft portrayals with Teatro Vivo. Lindsley Howard is new to me but will become much more familiar to our Austin audiences next month when she plays Miranda, the romantic lead in Austin Shakespeare's The Tempest. Keylee Paige Koop, Ashley Rae Spillers (with that striking red flower in her hair) and Rose Fredson also absorbed their characters and interpreted them decisively. Maybe Charlie has a point; with wealth of femininity such as this, we may be missing something on the feminine side in Austin theatre.
And yet -- and yet. . . Caroline Kava's story is thin and predictable, along the lines of a facile sitcom or a Latina telenovela. The playwright fails to explore so much and so many possible narrative avenues. Charlie pitches that as a virtue: "Early Girl is never about the lurid or sensationalistic aspects of prostitution, but instead is about how the women in the house relate to each other, and about the secret toll the profession takes on each of the employees."
Keylee Paige Koop arrives as Lily, the "new girl" in Lana's brothel, presumably located somewhere in the freebooting, free-screwing state of Nevada. We witness her introduction and indoctrination, including the various "cardinal rules" laid down by the proprietor. One of these, inexplicably, is that no one -- NO ONE -- is allowed to touch, answer or use the telephone that sits prominently in the lounge area ( so we know that in symmetry with Chekhov's rifle on the wall, it will go off at a crucial moment later in the play). New girl Lily is secretly planning to stay no more than a month, just enough time to get a grubstake for herself and for her baby girl, both abandoned by an undiscussed husband. She has probably not quite reached the 18th birthday required to qualify to be hired as a sexual worker.
Kava telegraphs most of the rest of the characters. Lana the proprietor is vain, self-deluding, cajoling and infatuated with phony culture (using painfully applied little French phrases, adoring luxury goods and talking about trips to Europe that probably included pricey plastic surgery). Wendy Zavaleta is a good sport and puts up with that caricature, including the cruel Freudian slips that signal she's closer to 50(!) than to 30. Karen Alvarado is Laurel, the top earner, withdrawn and sunk in Book-of-the-Month selections between tricks. (Note that Kava gives three central characters names starting with the same letter [Lily, Lana and Laurel], confirming the ball park dictum that you can't follow the players without a program.) The charming Ashley Rae Spillers is brainless Pat, collector of gadgets, goods and items advertised in magazines, and Rose Fredson is tall, emphatic George, hopelessly enamored with regular client Eric from the district attorney's office.
Jean, played by Lindsley Howard, is given some depth and some unexpected background as a former college student and the daughter of an undertaker. With a sharp wit and a good vocabulary, she's the only one of the women endowed with something of a past and an enigmatic explanation for the inertia that maintains her in a job that's essentially mindless menial bodily labor. Howard plays the "elder sister" role to new girl Koop, as well as a central role in the eventual inevitable rebellion against the house's "cardinal rules," providing the new girl with an escape back to her plain life and her baby.
Early Girl takes place in an eternal now. Kava has written a "chick play" in which the outside world is unexplained and largely unheeded. These women are disengaged, except for the shows they deliver for clients, repeatedly symbolized in the little flounce and straightening of the shoulders as they exit deep center to the clients' parlor. Except for college dropout Jean, Kava's characters appear to have no pasts and, consequently, no futures.
Which leads to the fundamental, unexplained question: how did they get there in the first place? We have no idea. Yes, we see that new girl Lily is looking for the money, but we don't learn who recruited her or how. There must be structures of power and influence aggressively at work beyond this slovenly little lounge. It seems that proprietor Lana is equally clueless about them. Predictably, the concluding scene, after Lily has reluctantly accepted her liberation, gives us another "new girl" (Karrasch), gushingly ready for her new job.
The newest girl springs as inexplicably from the earth as did the mythic Greek warriors generated by the sowing of dragon's teeth. The tale of power, enticement and recruitment would be a different narrative. It could be told with an all-female cast, but that would be a story different from the one that Kava chose to tell.
Pre-opening feature by Barry Pineo in Austin Chronicle, July 28
Uncredited review posted at the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, August 4
Review by Bastion Carboni at Austinist.com, August 5
Review by Avimaan Syam, Austin Chronicle, August 12
Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, August 13
Review by webmaster, TheatreAustin, Yahoo groups, August 26
EXTRA
Click to view program for Early Girl by Carolyn Kava by Paladin Theatre Company
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Early Girl
by Caroline Kava
Paladin Theatre Company
