Dorothy Chansky
Lakeside Showdown at Hormone-Hyped Summer Camp
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| Left: Rosalie Fischer as Lisa; Right: K.C. Wright as Toni. Photo by Lisa Helfert Photography |
Ugly Ducklings
Venus Theatre Company
at the Warehouse Theatre
1021 Seventh Street SW, Washington, D.C.
April 16-May 16
Tickets $15
Box Office (202)783-3933 or www.venustheatre.com
"This is not realism. It's a Gothic play," declared playwright Carolyn Gage in a talkback session following a recent performance of her "Ugly Ducklings," now receiving its world premiere at D.C.'s Venus Theatre. Reality - the "wake up and smell the coffee" kind - kept the 1986 play from having a full-fledged production until now. Its topic, lesbianism at a summer camp, and the casting requirements, which include eight girls who can play ages seven through thirteen and deal with sexuality, were hot potatoes that no one wanted to touch. Or so Gage tells it.
"Ugly Ducklings" is indeed Gothic (dark, melodramatic, and slightly over the top), but it is also realistic. Director Deborah Randall established sympathetic and largely believable characterizations while unfussily negotiating the script's numerous betrayals, confessions, contrived confrontations, hysterical outbursts, attempted suicide, and heroic rescue. By the end it was hard to feel very good about a world in which "the het people are the monsters" and in which the playwright self-proclaimedly "did to the straight characters what they've done to our people." Yes, well. Some summer camps might subscribe to the two wrongs don't make a right school, but Gage's Fernlake isn't one of them.
Still, it was also hard not to like many of these confused, angry, but honest characters. Eight-year-old Lisa (Rosalie Fischer) follows thirteen-year-old Toni (K.C. Wright), who in turn only wants to be with college-aged Angie (Cindy Marie Martin), her favorite counselor. Angie, a naïve but feisty canoe specialist who can tie knots but can't recognize a come-on when it's staring her in the face, stands up for what she thinks is right. In the course of the play, through her friendship with the out lesbian Renee (MaConnia Chesser), the scales fall from Angie's eyes and she decides that she is a lesbian, too. Angie's willingness to admit this to the baby dyke, Lisa, who has just tried to hang herself after the perpetually angry and manipulative Toni humiliates her (why can't thirteen-year-olds just play nice?), saves the day.
Some of "Ugly Ducklings" is just within spitting distance of the sort of campy (the other kind) humor for which the Five Lesbian Brothers are known. Charlotte, Fernlake's owner/director (Linda Kenyon) is a syrupy old battleaxe who's never gotten over her best high school friend (gasp) marrying a man. Vanessa (Kathryn Kelly), Angie's college roommate and another counselor, is an evil nympho out of a rancid "Debbie Does Dallas" retread. MaConnia Chesser's no-punches-pulled performance as Renee, the urban kid who was on the streets at age fourteen after an attempted rape by her mother's latest boyfriend, is one of the evening's high points. Of course, it's completely implausible that the strictly L.L. Bean Charlotte would hire a bull dyke with multiple piercings, multi-colored dreadlocks, and the demeanor of a bulldozer, but that's part of the Gothic fun. Think "The Children's Hour" meets "The Bad Seed" with bathing suits and a happyish ending.
Paul Kelm's set design makes the lakeside dock credible and workable on a stage barely twenty-five feet wide and about half as deep. A small wooden wall serves as a cabin, and the edge of the stage is a pier under which several characters hide and eavesdrop. It's a testimony to the workability of the design and the power of the acting that even in the tiny Warehouse Theatre, which appears to seat about forty, one forgets that the eavesdroppers are hiding.
So, what does 2004 have that 1986 didn't, vis-à-vis this play? Well, eight young girls have their parents' blessings to appear in and come to terms with this piece of writing. Venus Theatre is dedicated to "setting flight to the voices of women" in a spectrum of feminist work. The company can deliver style and concept on a shoestring of a budget, in a shoebox of a venue. That's no small thing. [Chansky]
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