Belles; a play in two acts or 45 phone calls
by Mark Dunn
at the Ghent Playhouse,
Ghent.
 
Belles is likely to supply lifetime income for playwright Mark Dunn as long as community theaters must search for plays that offer juicy monologues to their best over-30 actresses. There are some good ones in this production—monologues and actresses.
   However, this story involving six sisters sharing by telephone their frequent woes and occasional wins has a familiar, old aroma about it, rather like the pictures on one of their walls. (Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and two pen-sketched children who appear to be opening their pants to inspect their own genitals.)
   This play is too young to be a period piece and too old for sharp, contemporary realities. In other words, dated—in spite of the fact that narratives involving siblings damaged by damaged parents will not go out of style entirely until parents stop damaging children, which is never.
   Each sister has chosen/succumbed to a radically different maladjustment.  We have the dutiful stay-home-to-care-for-mama sister, Peggy, played with convincing simplicity by Sally Dodge; and Paige, a college student with dating issues, played unconvincingly by Leanne Wilensky; and the handsome, loner, alcoholic Aneece (who unfortunately must deliver her touching emotional breakdown to a photograph), well-played by Jackie DeGiorgis; and the round, sweet-faced Eileen Johnson as Audrey, who is extremely distressed by the loss of “her boy,” a wooden puppet! Denise Rubio offers a delightfully outrageous, promiscuous, Sherry/Dust, a not-so-free spirit. (Her frequent name changes have lately turned to “Dust.” Maybe because she so frequently gets swept away.) The most nuanced character is Cathy Lee-Visscher’s Roseanne, a minister’s wife whose husband has flown the sanctuary as well as the coop. (It is a pleasure to watch Lee-Visscher over the years bringing more and more understanding and imagination to each new role.)
   The emotional malfunctions of these sisters are so deliberately contrasting that they verge on cartoon. It is a difficulty inherent in the play, though director Nancy Wilder has done what she can with it. Wilder must keep every actress attached to her phone and thus in one area of the stage; but she has given them all such a variety of physicalities (sitting, stretching, lying, lounging, dancing, sitting on the floor, with both movement and stillness) that the piece always seems fluid and alive. For example, Lee-Visscher/Roseanne is standing–just standing serenely in her kitchen, having matured before our eyes; and it tells all about the life-place she has reached.
   Tom Detwiler’s sets are nearly always marvels of realistic good taste, even beauty. This time he was required to create six separate spaces, one for each sister, and though the levels and side-stage spaces work well, they feel a bit overstuffed.
   If, early in the play, the transition music and regional accents make you wish to see Texas returned with apologies to Mexico, be patient. Later sounds become more northerly.
   Is it a coincidence that one sister intones “Adieu…to yieu!” just as Judy Holliday intoned it many years ago in Bells Are Ringing?
Belles plays Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through October 25. Web site: www.ghentplayhouse.org; Telephone (518) 392-6264.

I Know I Came In Here For Something

A musical revue by Carl Ritchie and Wayne Moore

Taconic Stage Company

Dinner Theatre at The Lighthouse, Craryville

In its previous incarnation, the Carl Ritchie/Wayne Moore musical revue, I Know I Came In Here For Something, was attended by large, noisy, summer crowds who laughed long and lustily at our familiar, after-40-something woes: forgetfulness, menopause, pot bellies, back problems, erectile dysfunction, etc.

Recently, I attended the dress rehearsal for the show’s reappearance.

I liked it better this time.

Three of the four singer/actors, Cathy Lee-Visscher, Diedre Bollinger, Brian Litscher, are returning, and the long summer run has given their performances stronger, cleaner lines. (Actually Lee-Visscher was strong from the beginning, and it remains her show.) The new guy is Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon. At the dress rehearsal he was still a bit shaky, but we (all five rehearsal-guests) got a taste of his comedic talents in several of the sketches.

Ritchie’s lyrics are fun, often witty with piles of fresh rhymes and a clever pun tucked in here and there.Where touching is required, he makes that work as well. His songs sometimes end with a single sentence that takes a pleasantly surprising left turn.

The music, on the other hand, is just too unsophisticated for these lyrics. It is probably meant as pastiche, and it follows the revue tradition, with contrasting tempos, major and minor modes, marches, waltzes, Latin beats, etc. But the harmonies are simply too predictable and the phrasing and stylistic devices too familiar. It is possible that this music pleases audiences of a certain age, and no one would suggest that the composer should rock; but he certainly could tickle the ears with some fresher harmonies, rhythms, and settings of the words.

Brian Litscher is a presence. His singing is rich and sure, and he delivers the lyrics with admirable clarity. Litscher gets to sing one of the show’s best songs during which he visits his aged mother in a nursing home. One might wish that he would struggle in a more focused way to reach her—make her a real presence as well.

In the game show sketch, Schane-Lydon makes especially good use of his gigantic stage-eyes and young Jackie Gleason style. His erectile dysfunction number becomes a bit visually boring, but who can resist a situation in which a man takes all the E.D. pills, forgetting that his wife has gone to her mother’s for a week? And who can resist the lyric that bemoans “a Dick without a Jane”?

Although her singing is beset with pitch problems, Diedre Bollinger is effective in her dark, cynical commitment to her dark, cynical, funny material. In one of her numbers, she repeatedly shrinks into a cramped posture, squeezing elbows and witchy hands toward her body, and contorting her face with resistance to the horrors of mid-life bodily functions. We would keep laughing as long as she was willing to repeat it! 

In “There’s More of Me to Love,” one may wonder why this slim, attractive actress was assigned a song about being overweight. Maybe they could pad her, or something.

As mentioned above, the show belongs to Cathy Lee-Visscher. This is the only actress I know who can do “cutesy” and make you love it instead of inviting you to throw up. Her healthy, optimistic, energetic, dumb blonde is irresistible. However, there is much more in Lee-Visscher’s bag of tricks. She never offers you a character or a whole song in which she plays the same note throughout. People in real life seldom express themselves that way, and she doesn’t either. From phrase to phrase, there is always an evolving, very human take on a lyric, and her quick switches in the sketches are hilarious.

Helen Schneider’s costumes for a class-reunion number have more impact than the number itself, and at the end of the show, the four actors look spiffy with men in white tie and women in glamour gowns.

Occasionally, transitions between numbers are uneasy, but mostly the staging and direction of the comedy are well-conceived and smoothly executed. Ritchie wisely keeps it simple.

It’s $30 for a buffet dinner and the show. For reservations call (518) 325-1234.