Rebecca Del Sesto (Photo by Jackie Shearn)
Reviewed by Molly McLean
Theatre 40
Through April 20
Theatre 40 of Beverly Hills is hosting a world premiere of Beatnik Girl by Leda Siskind. Like Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Ahmanson in 2022, it is a recreation of a storied time and place through a female protagonist and her friends — in this case, the 1950s Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Edie Gordon (Rebecca Del Sesto) moves into a dingy apartment and makes friends with a fellow free spirit down the hall, Nadine (Andrea Geones). Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg have parallels in this story via the characters of Kurt and Nathan (Bradley James Holzer and Alex Scyocurka, respectively). Siskind makes sure we notice their casual misogyny: reliance on women’s labor to keep their lifestyles afloat, or dismissiveness of their feelings. All of these and more serious roadblocks show the audience the difficulty for women to break into male-dominated fields.
In Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the author argues that any thinking person needs material resources to be able to finish their work. Here, Edie needs to have her own space, uninhabited by her boss’s hands on her skin or her situation, such as Kurt barging in whenever he likes. Though Edie feels free, it takes her time to realize the ways her male colleagues keep her confined.
All characters fall and fail often. Yet the succession of defeats are so frequent and predictable that it is hard to feel any of them deeply.
Jeff G. Rack’s set has three parts: Edie’s office, her apartment, and the beat cafe. They are a little 20th century vague, which leaves a bit of 1950s style to be desired. The set is placed far upstage, removed from the audience in a 100-seat theater. In such a small place, there is no reason for it to be so far from us.
The lighting design is clear by Derrick McDaniel, mostly used to show time of day or create mood, like the shadows in the beat cafe. The costumes by Michael Mullen are effective. They communicate social status, era, and personality quickly and with style.
The transitions between the cafe, office, and apartment halt the energy of the show. These transitions also serve to allow the characters to change costume often. However, the long transitions allow Adam Zilberman to perform some beautiful jazz interludes on saxophone and clarinet. It’s nice to have live accompaniment, which occasionally foreshadows the mood of the next scene. The production is directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowky
This play is a sweet tribute to underdogs breaking into the arts. It reminded me of Joanna Russ’s book How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Russ argues that many women have clear lineages in mind when creating their artistic career: you may think that George Eliot was a pioneer, but she was inspired by Aphra Behn, who was inspired by Sappho, et cetera. Or, in this case, women artists whose names we never learn, are inspiring and supporting others — much like the real Edie Gordon, named in the program as Siskind’s mother.
Theater 40 in the Mary Cutler Theatre, 241 South Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills. Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru April 20. http://theatre40.org.
