NOTES FROM ARDEN

Clem on Top (Girls) at Antaeus

BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

 

I’m turning this week’s Notes over to poet/drama critic Clem, who has a compellingly unorthodox take on Antaeus Company’s production of Top Girls, which he caught last week.  That review appears with a sampling of Clem’s poetry that he insisted we include as part of his contribution. Clem is also angling for his own column, Clem’s Corner, but some reservations about that have been expressed by certain members of our team. Feel free to weigh in via steven@stageraw.com

 

Before I pass the mantle to Clem, however, please note this week’s eight new reviews in Stage Raw, including high praise for Carey Crim’s Wake (SeaGlass Theatre at Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena), Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig at the Hudson, and Impro Theatre’s  Shakespeare Unscripted at Pasadena Playhouse.

 

Bill Raden’s Stage Rows returns with notes from NYC, as well as a big honor for Open Fist Theatre Co; Pauline Adamek harks the herald angels from down-under — Australian Theatre Company launching in L.A. after a successful Kickstarter campaign; Deborah Klugman interviews playwright Amir Abdullah on the intersections of basketball, Islam and friendship. (His first play, Pray to Ball, is running at the Skylight Theatre).  And Citizen Raw resumes its cross-generational View From the Bridge this weekend with student Reza Vojdani, an Occidental College student, going to the theater with Stage Raw’s Rebecca Haithcoat. Both will file their reviews and comments next week. And now, on to Clem:

 

Theater Review

Top Girls

Reviewed by Clem

 

 

I very much enjoyed and appreciated this fine production of Winston Churchill’s  Top Girls. I knew that the great British army officer and politician wrote books and articles and even did impressionist paintings, and Sir Winston got a Nobel Peace Prize for his writings. I was not aware, however,  that the British statesman wrote stage plays. Thinking it over, his dabbling in the art of the stage shouldn’t be a surprise. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that he was so forward-thinking as to set his play in 1980s London, almost 20 years after he died. But that was the kind of guy Sir Winston was – always thinking ahead.

 

You never know for sure which cast you’re going to see in a production at Antaeus Company. They train a couple of actors to fill each role, in case one of them has to walk away from a production they’re in for a week or two to be on a reality TV show that might put some steak in the freezer, since most of theater I see in these parts doesn’t pay their actors enough to buy a bag o’ beans. Looks like everyone around here is thinking ahead.

 

In the show I saw, smoothly directed by Cameron Watson, Marlene was played by Sally Hughes in fine style, showing this actress to be not just in control of the very difficult talking, which she did with such command, I thought she might be from England. She’s pretty, too. Sir Winston’s point, though, is that Marlene wants to get ahead in life. She’s throwing a party to celebrate her promotion in an employment agency.

 

It gets a little freaky when the guests at her dinner are all kinds of gals from history or from works of art, which makes you kind of think the whole thing is just unfolding in Marlene’s head. There’s 19^th century Scottish woman and world-traveler Isabella (Karianne Flaathen), who wrote a whole bunch of books about her travels; Lady Nijo (Kimiko Gelman), a 13^th century Japanese concubine; Dull Gret (the amazing Abigail Marks), a kind of dullard gal in a helmet and apron who actually showed up in a painting by Pieter Breughel; Patient Griselda (Jeanne Syquia) – Chaucer adapted her for his Canterbury Tales; and, finally, Pope Joan (Elizabath Swain), a medieval female Pope who some folks say went around dressed like a man and fooled everyone. Sure.

 

When these people talk, and they talk a lot about what they’ve been through, they keep interrupting each other, so the talk overlaps quite a bit. Sometimes there are two or three conversations going on at the same time. This is Sir Winston weighing in on how women don’t listen, which is what I’ve been saying for years.

 

This leads to the clearer point: Turns out Pope Joan was stoned to death when they discovered “he” was a she. I mean, she talks in Latin quite a bit in the play, so she’s smart and educated and puts on good face, but they’re all miserable ‘cause they don’t get that they’re gals, and gals should know their place.

 

 

Act 2 shifts to contemporary London, where Marlene shows she’s grown quite a healthy pair of testicles. By trying to be a man, her heart’s grown hard. That’s a feeling I know well (see my poem Ballad of the Wrongly Accused, in the Style of Bob Dylan below). I won’t tell the ending of the plot, because I’ve been told not to, but let’s just say that in trying to push ahead with her career, like a man does, Marlene has turned into a modern version of Lady Macbeth, who I was once married to, so I know what I’m saying. To people like Marlene, friends and relatives are just so much garbage to be kicked to the gutter.

 

Sir Winston is telling us to be human and humane and not so money-grubbing, which is remarkable, coming from the guy who took on Hitler, and who helped pull all of us through World War II. His play shows the need for all of us to have a sensitive side.  You might say, Sir Winston didn’t beat Hitler by being sensitive, so the point of being human is to be tough enough to live, and sensitive enough to know what you’re living for.

 

Antaeus Company, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood; Thurs.-Sut., 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2 p.m.; through  May 18.  (818) 506-1983, https://antaeus.org

 

 

Poems by Clem: (All rights reserved)

 

 Ballad of the Wrongly Accused, in the style of Bob Dylan

 

My piles is on fire,

My heart, it’s gone hard.

My poor reputation it be somewhat marred.

F.B.I.’s got me on their list,

Something to do with that sheep I once kissed.

I told ‘em, I told ‘em, I ain’t done no crime,

“Book him,” they said. “You doin’ time.”

“Clem ain’t no pervert,” said Flossie that night.

“We was just talkin’. He was polite.”

Next thing I know I’m back out on the street,

Sometimes in my dreams I still hear Flossie bleat.

My piles is on fire,

My heart, it’s gone hard,

My poor reputation it be somewhat marred.

 

My Heart

 

You can have my heart, but my liver is mine.

You can have my heart, but my liver is mine.

You can have my heart, but my liver is mine.

Gotta save my bile for a heartless time.

 

Home

I been to London.

I been to Rome.

There’s only one place

I call home.

And that’s Hemet.