Best Dinner Scene In A Play Top Girls
Damesrocket Theatre STAFF PICK: The feminist dinner party in this British play
was so terrific that we just had to make up a category to accommodate
it. A contemporary English business woman, briskly played by our
own Molly McKasson, is having a dinner party to celebrate a promotion.
But the guest list, my dears, is to die for. There's Pope Joan
(Cynthia Meier), the legendary female pope of the ninth century;
Lady Nijo (Joy Lynn Pak), a 13th-century Japanese courtesan and
Buddhist nun; Dull Gret (Jodi K. Cuneo), a 16th-century warrior-housewife;
Patient Griselda (Kiley Jones DeGreen), the Chaucer character
who gave up her children to prove her love for her husband; and
finally, a real-life Victorian lady traveler, the plucky Isabella
Bird (Toni Press-Coffman). These ladies discourse on everything
under the female sun: ambitions pinched, lovers acquired, children
stolen, victories over patriarchy--however short-lived. Director
Caroline Reed allowed the characters to luxuriate in their freedom
to talk; they interrupted, talked with their mouths full, talked
at the same time as the others. Their dialogue became a voluptuous
tapestry of voices triumphantly unsilenced.
