The Beauty, The Banshee & Me

Reviewed by Julio Martinez
The Whitefire Theatre
Through October 23

Cathy Lind Hayes begins her solo journey by offering a rapid but soft-spoken rap on her fight with cancer. Finally freed from the ailment that also afflicted her mother, Cathy flees to Italy to begin life anew. Throughout her discourse, Hayes is self-contained — occasionally offering brief asides, divulging whimsical self-evaluations, and commenting off-handedly as she guides the audience through the revelation of her adoption at age three by 1950s showbiz icons, Peter Lind Hayes and his wife Mary Healy.

Growing up, Cathy followed her parents from their home in New Rochelle to Las Vegas, where they headlined at the Sands Hotel 14 times. She describes how, at age six, she was taken to the rooftop of the hotel to watch the explosion of a nuclear test 90 miles away. Then she quietly reminds the audience that both she and her mother suffered from breast cancer.

Director Michael Allen Angel keeps the pace moving along, accompanied by occasional rear-projected slides and videos supplied by video designer Yee Eun Nam. We watch as Cathy spends years endeavoring to learn about her birth parentage, a 25-year sojourn, beginning with New York’s Foundling Hospital. But she is tenacious in dealing with social workers and nuns, and forcing sympathetic workers to “break the rules” — until finally she learns that her mother’s name is Ann, and that she is Irish American. 

At times, Cathy plays other roles.  And she is at her best when recreating Ann, a stubborn former nurse who did not want to be found and resists Cathy’s efforts to make contact with her. But Cathy is monumentally persistent, tracking her mother to Florida and finally just presenting herself. Cathy relates her efforts to find out information about her birth father, but Ann is deeply resistant.

Throughout the narrative, Cathy makes brief forays into her life as the child of a celebrity couple. She relates that, after the death of Peter, she moved in for a while with her mother, who at age 80 could be quite demanding. Cathy offers a humorous anecdote about having to deal with some gorgeous firemen whom her mother would call whenever there was anything amiss about the house.

But the narrative ultimately becomes heavily focused on her efforts to find out more about her birth father. It’s frustrating for Cathy because the issue is never resolved. But for the audience, her journey is a trip well worth taking.            

Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks; Thurs., 8 p.m., Sun, 3 p.m.; through October 23. (323) 960-1055; or www.plays411.com/banshee; Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.