December 7, 2018
The elephant in the room is the
fact of my being a male critic
reviewing a play that means to be a feminist manifesto, as well as a profile of
its real-life title character (the two objectives being inseparable) and coming
away with very mixed feelings. So let’s start here: Yay feminism, three cheers Gloria Steinem, and may the play stick around to have as
much influence and impact as it possibly can, especially in the current
climate, where even some of the most basic protections and advances, long
thought lawfully secure, are coming under fire from some of their most
insidious opponents.
In fact, I’ll go further than that: As both
manifesto and profile, Gloria absolutely
does what it sets out to do: to make its socio-political points clearly and
accurately present the highlights version of a life, from its start to the
present. And avoid being dull in the process. Under the direction of Diane Paulus, Emily Mann’s
mission-efficient play moves along at a clip, making optimum use of an open
space in an in-the-round configuration at the Daryl Roth Theatre.
Here’s my conundrum: All that being true, it still
isn’t much of a play.
Caveat #1: It’s scripted in a very familiar fashion:
Present-day Gloria (energetic and appealing as played by Christine Lahti) enters to address us and the rest of the
small all-female ensemble as if at a rally, and after a few observations and
sentiments that make it clear we’re really flashing back from today (i.e.
the recent blue-wave election is acknowledged), we go to the beginning of
her life, from which we steadily progress through a summary record of key
moments and accomplishments—with a smattering of interstitial reflection and
rumination. Though Gloria’s the central narrator, the rest of the cast frequently
picks up the thread, with a lot of taking turns as short phrases are
rapid-fired in human surround sound, along with quick character cameos: Any one
of the actresses can suddenly take on the air, attitude and available-prop
costume of a figure meaningful to the moment. Stylistically, this goes back to
at least the 60s in America, and arguably back to Brecht in Germany; but all right, it’s
also a durable device, so what the hell.
What confuses the issue for me most is Caveat #2:
The dialogue is all boilerplate stuff. Demotic, everyday, often cliched, and
rife with sloganeering—as, of course, a play about one of the key activists
in the feminist movement would have to be. Indeed, the very issues with
which she struggles were/are all needful of expression in the language of
plain, unambiguous speaking. And yet: That renders the play frustratingly
bereft of verbal wit. And that—if you attend hoping to see not just a
manifesto, not just an efficient profile, but a play, renders it all more than
a bit…perhaps bland is not the word…maybe vanilla.
I don’t know if Ms. Steinem and her story could have
been presented accurately in a theatrical setting any other way. All I know is,
I left the theatre wishing the game might have been as daring as the woman being depicted.
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