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A CurtainUp Review
Oedipus at Palm Springs
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Excuse me Prin if I don't want to take relationship advice from someone who thinks a lap dance is intimacy. --- Con Have you ever had a lap dance? --- Prin- |
Lisa Kron
(Photo: Joan Marcus) |
"The taste of it is really surprising -- like a combination of pineapple and love," declares Con (Lisa Kron) of her lover Fran's (Maureen Angelos) breast milk. Soon she's encouraging their mutual friend Prin (Dominique Dibbell) to try it for herself. Prin takes her up on it and declares "Not bad," but concludes " I prefer a well-made scotch, myself" It's a well-placed joke that hints at the themes driving the Five Lesbian Brothers's new play, Oedipus at Palm Springs: breast feeding, yuppie vacations, true love, and the troubled effect of motherhood on sex.
The play which just opened at the New York Theater Workshop is a tragi-comic lesbian inversion of the Oedipus myth and marks a departure from the group's pure satiric silliness. That's not to say that the Brothers don't still deliver plenty of hammy butch/femme humor and copious full frontal nudity. But this time they also have more serious aims. The result is an absorbing and provocative look at the various relationship issues plus a hearty dose of gratuitous toplessness -- though, in this case, bare breasts are anything but beside the point.
The initial focus on brazen sex jokes and silly nude scenes soon becomes the play's central metaphor. Breasts are at the heart of Fran and Con's struggle to revive their sex life after a four-year drought following the birth of their first child. "I love your tits and I'm not allowed to touch them and it makes me really sad!" exclaims Con, parroting therapist-speak afte one of her upper-body overtures has been rejected. "It is really intense while I'm breast feeding," replies Fran. "It's like my breasts aren't for sex. They're for food." Con struggles to eliminate that dichotomy and to make Fran's breasts a source of food and desire.
In the casita across the courtyard, the ostensibly happier couple, Prin and Terri (Peg Healy), play out a more sinister version of the same conflict. In a recent Village Voice interview the members of the group explained that their aim was to examine the Oedipus story from the point of view of Jocasta, a destroyed mother who has fallen into the wrong kind of love with her child. However, their take on the Greek classic is more than a shift in perspective or an ancient story transplanted into a new social milieu. Lesbianism is the integral twist in the plot.
Prin, "the uber-homosexual" tells Con and Fran to rejuvenate their sex life by ramping up their butch/femme dynamic When Con asks "What's the point of being a lesbian if you're just aping some heterosexual paradigm?" Prin counters with an assured "You want Fran to take you like a caveman." She then mixes margaritas, lights the grill and seduces Terri. It seems Prin rejected feminity a long time ago, about the same time she made what proves to be a self-destructive decision to by-pass motherhood.
David Korins' vanilla-and-raspberry stucco set with pastel bedrooms bookending a courtyard pool, allows director Leigh Silverman to toy with Greek tragic staging while never abandoning Palm Springs. Instead of the groves at Colonus, we're treated to two palm trees with a sparkly pink heart dangling from the doorway between them. The pool is the site of afternoon makeout sessions, late-night skinny dipping - and the occasional libation. The bedding, faux-Navajo blankets to match the dreamcatchers adorning the walls, supports hotelkeeper Joni's obsession with spiritual kitsch - then, for one moment, Fran and Con exit too quickly to dress, and their blankets turn into togas. At the end of the play, when Prin has exhausted her escape routes and alcohol supply, she raises an empty Jack Daniels bottle as a libation but what we see is just a drunk who wants more whiskey.
It's this mix of brash playfulness with the elements of Greek tragedy -- the abrupt switches from hilarity to horror -- that give Oedipus at Palm Springs its impact. The actors shift from comedy to tragedy with great agility, with Dibbell and Healey particularly impressive. Ultimately, the motherhood jokes are no longer about whether kiwi is on a list of reactive foods. Betrayals are more than a friend tasting your lover's nipples. What we have is a play about losing the only person you thought you could count on -- which is no less tragic when it happens in Palm Springs and you're surrounded by golf courses, outlets, and margaritas galore.
| OEDIPUS IN PALM SPRINGS Written and Performed by Maureen Angelos (Fran), Babs Davy (Joni), Lisa Kron (Con), Dominique Dibbell (Prin), Peg Healy (Terri) Directed by Leigh Silvermanm Set Design: David Korins Costume Design: Miranda Hoffman Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger Original Music/Sound Design: John Gromada Running Time: One hour and forty-five minutes. New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th St., New York, NY 10003. Box office: 212-460-5475. Web: www.nytw.org. From 7/20/05 to 8/28/05; opening 8/03/05. Tickets:$60; Cheaptix Sundays, $20. Reviewed by Miriam Felton-Dansky based on 8/03/05 performance. |
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