If, when you go to the theater, you require a heaping helping of linear narrative smothered in a thick gravy of realistic character, then Live Arts’ current offering, Our American Ann Sisters, is not for you. But if you enjoy a variety of spicy tapas offering an unexpected mix of piquant flavors, then this play will satisfy your dramatic cravings.
|
Ladies first: Mary and Sophia Peabody (Doreen Bechtol, left, and Sian Richards) engender a wide-ranging evening of theater in Our American Ann Sisters at Live Arts. |
Wait. Did I just use a cooking metaphor? Is that sexist? If so, apologies to the members of PEP, an apt acronym for the kinetic women of the Performers Exchange Project, perhaps best known as the hearts and minds behind last year’s Shentai carnival at the Frank Ix building.
PEP’s latest original creation, Our American Ann Sisters, mixes feminism, Vaudeville, sitcoms, fairy tales, history, dance, Disney movies, pop songs, physical theater and more. The troupe works by “building the physical action and text as an ensemble,” explains director Martha Mendenhall. The text in this case grew out of the PEP actors’ responses to a historical study of Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody, three gifted sisters who lived during that mid-19th century flowering of literary creativity, the American Renaissance.
Mary, Sophia and Elizabeth serve as masks that allow the performers to playfully investigate what it means to be women and artists in contemporary America. “What are the pressures that shape us?” they ask. “And how far have we really come?”
In the play, mid-19th century history quickly dissolves in an effervescent fizz of late-20th century pop culture. Emerson and Thoreau, for example, appear as badly punning stand-up comics at a roast of Elizabeth Peabody, played by Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell.
Doreen Bechtol plays Mary Peabody in a “Brady Bunch”-meets-Brothers Grimm fantasy. In a sketch that might have been written by Ibsen after smoking some very potent weed, Sian Richards, with mordant wit, plays Sophia on the eve of her wedding to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The exuberant women of PEP bristle with spiky comic energy. Joining them is the fearlessly funny Kay Leigh Ferguson, who inhabits various parts with superb comic skills and dead-on timing. (She does a killer Phyllis Diller.) The play also thrives on Jenny McNee’s clever and gorgeous costumes, as well as John Paul Scheidler’s charming set evoking an old Vaudeville stage.
There’s much to like about Our American Ann Sisters—perhaps a wee bit too much, as the dance numbers feel long, and an occasional joke that worked once doesn’t work twice. But when offered such a generous smorgasbord, the best thing is to eat without guilt.
