Review: Talking with Jane Martin, by Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
by Michael Meigs
Talking With is a collection of eleven monologues delivered by women characters, first staged in 1981 in Louisville, Kentucky. It played off-Broadway in 1982 to great success. The identity of playwright Jane Martin remains a mystery. All of her considerable work has first been staged at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky, by that group's artistic director John Jory.
This is a collection of sharp, bittersweet portraits of women, many of whom have reacted to disappointments by melting into private worlds. An actress; a housewife who lives much of the day in the dream world of Oz; a baton twirler and a rodeo rider; an aspiring actress; a woman about to give birth to a child who may be deformed; a devotee of the plastic world of McDonald's; and more.
Martin's pieces offer actresses a moment on the high wire -- an almost bare stage, a character, and an audience to convince. Monologues run about ten minutes. They have a rhythm. Establishment; elaboration; vivid word pictures;a moment of absence; a jolt or a moment of defiance as the woman leads us, willing, to lean over her Pensieve.
Six actresses associated with the North by Northwest Theatre company did Talking With last October at the City Theatre. The Red Dragon Players at Austin High School have just done a version featuring no fewer than 27 actresses, trading out roles over the five-day run of the production.
It was scheduled to run for six days, but opening night was canceled because it coincided with the UT - Alabama championship football game.
Triple-casting is a terrible tease to reviewers. The Georgetown Palace did it for their December production of Annie, The Musical. ALT took the bait again last week, attending the first production of the second week of the show.
Each of the women had absorbed the character and delivered an interpretation credible enough to win applause not only from friends and family in the audience but also from the rest of us. For the school drama program it was an opportunity to reward and exercise female talent -- at Austin High, as in secondary education generally, the women outnumber the men in drama courses and extracurriculars. It was ever thus. For the audience it was a Whitman's sampler of faces, shapes, interpretations and talents.
Performance anticipation and energy was high among the cast, leading several to pace or to move emphatically during their presentations. No one was missing lines, at least not as far as we in the audience could detect, but sometimes we had the impression that the character (and the actress within) was performing at a higher pace than was necessary, perhaps uncertain of entirely owning and using that allocated space and time. Of course, I had the advantage of the benchmark -- the NxNW performances of actresses who "owned" the stage through their self-assurance. They could sit and make us wait and wonder what on earth was coming next.
My favorites were the actresses who concluded each act. Meredith King told us the exquisitely remembered story of a mother faced with only 90 days to live. Each day was marked by a clear glass marble, held in hand all day and then released at nightfall. King's calm was haunting and her pacing was perfect, punctuated by the periodic release of another marble to roll across the floor into silence. Hers was a performance of rare and unexpected maturity.
Lily Primeaux, swirling with tattoos in "Marks," told us the background of a disappointed, extinguished marriage, her husband's dismissal of her as insignificant. After a nighttime assault in the parking lot of a bar that left her face scarred, she found distinction in her disfigurement and subsequently in her body art. Most of the time Primeaux stood still ot knelt, virtually motionless, carrying us with the concept and with the stories of her various tattoos, enigmatically explained. Reaching the end of the relation, she wrapped a rubber strap about an arm, put a spoon on the floor, and tested her veins -- a devotee of escape from reality. This was a courageous and on-target interpretation of a challenging text.
Kaylie DeLauri in "Audition" had energy and conviction, applying both with fine flair to the brash character determined to win an audition, whatever the cost. Her assertiveness, gestures and humor played the humor and absurdity of the situation. Also memorable were Taylor Beamon's Oz-bound "Scraps," Remi Brousseau's confident, dreamy narrative about "Lamps" and Angel Botera's narrative of the "Twirler" -- though hers would have been strengthened if she'd mastered some simple moves with the baton. Lilly Remmert was an attractive physical fit for the female rider in "Rodeo" and gave us an energetic dismissal of the jerks who had taken over a traditional activity to squeeze profit from it.
Thanks to all and to the drama department at the school. ALT looks forward to their next outing.
[The photo from the Red Dragon website is taken from an earlier production of Marat/Sade]
Talking with Jane Martin
by Jane Martin
Red Dragon Players, Austin High School
