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entertainment

Meet Dorothea

New Williams play reopens Brooks Theatre

by R. Woodward Playgoers who have enjoyed knowing the Tennessee Williams' character Blanche Du Bois will probably want to make the acquaintance of Dorothea, a dramatic and poetic relative of hers, who figures prominently in "A Lovely Sunday for Crev Coeur," the new Williams' play opening December 14 at the Cleveland Play House Brooks Theatre.

Dorothea, a southern lady up from Memphis who looks for love, has been having an "affair of the heart" with Ralph, the principal of the local high school where she teaches civics. Ralph (who is not seen in the play) has not exactly been faithful.

Much of the play's action consists of Bodey, the kind-hearted. factory-working female who is Dorothea's roommate, trying to keep Dorothea from reading the newspaper notice that tells of Ralph's engagement to another woman, while Helena, a bitchy colleague, tries to show Dorothea the announcement in order to gloat over her.

"The audience will really know these people," said Carol Schultz who will be playing Dorothea.

The play she said, is a "rich, full

seats about 100 people The action of the play, which is set in St. Louis on a hot day in the late 1930's, takes place in a tiny efficiency apartment.

The play is not only intimate, said Miss Schultz, there is also a lot of evidence in the script that Williams started out to write a screenplay.

She also said that the script is not very explicit about how which players are supposed to deliver what. There are often abrupt transistions from one emotional tone to another and moods that seem to be building a certain way will be interrupted by somebody's flight of fancy or poetic observation.

Having a smaller theater to work in, while not absolutely necessary to getting the play across, certainly leaves the players freer to concentrate on finding all of the right emotional nuances needed to keep their characterizations consistent.

Playgoers who have seen Miss Schultz's work know that she avoids flashy acting tricks and is able to grip an audience by radiating conviction about the character she is working at get-

ting across

When the interviewer used the phrase "a sort of radiation approach to acting," she replied that this was a valid way to describe how she works. "It's a matter of concentrating on the scene," she said, "of getting really into it. I work from the

inside."

Audiences at the small Brooks Theatre will have a chance to get a good close look at what Miss Schultz has discovered about Dorothea's interior.

Asked if she is annoyed when people who have seen a performance of hers greet her later as if greeting the character she played, Miss Schultz replied, "Not at all."

"It establishes a nice contact with people," she said. "It opens people up."

For reservations and informa-

tion about "A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur", which is not part of the Cleveland Play House's regular subscription series, call (216) 795-7000 With preview peformances on December 12 and 13. it runs from December 14 through January 20.

character study." It is simpler in At You Are Cabaret

structure than many of Williams'

previous full-length plays, has no exposition, is all action, and Williams in it "is more poetic than he has been in years."

'You can see in it little bits of every play he's ever written," said Miss Schultz.

The play includes a good-sized helping of the type of humor that has provided so much audience enjoyment with Williams' previous plays.

Dorothea likes to use chastesounding terminology to describe life's various realities.

"There's a wonderful scene at the top of Act II," said Miss Schultz. Dorothea, who is drunk and has been taking drugs for neuro-circulatory asthemia (a n illness which is emotional, no physical), describes trying to keep on a higher plane a discussionof her boyfriend's premature ejaculating with a doctor who makes a wisecrack about having a large laundry bill.

The Brooks Theatre, which has been dark for several years and reopens for this production.

PUCK IS NOT INTO GLITTER THIS YEAR. This photograph shows

what he looks like embodied by William Rhys in the production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" now playing at the Cleveland Play House Drury Theatre. See review.

Robin Tyler interviewed

By Bob Roehm

group of people to have made it COLUMBUS Robin Tyler, this far. And you have a chance, feminist comic, performed here in this lifetime, to change things October 27, less than two weeks for the rest of the world, so that after she was MC at the March On the 10%-12% of little boys and Washington October 14. During girls who are going to grow up to her performance, she spoke of be Gay and Lesbians are not Lesbians and Gay men, of politgoing to be called faggot, or ics and society. Her humor was dyke, or queer, or sissy. I think incisive as it forced us into new we should Save Our Children. ways of looking at ourselves.

In an interview, following her At the end of her performance, performance, she described New she spoke of the power we have, Woman's Humor, which had its as a community, to change beginnings while she was in the things. "You, as Lesbians and comedy team of Harrison and Gay people, are going to be leadTyler. She explained how humor ers in the 1980's, because you're is an aggressive, controlling tough. You've survived everymedium, and stated that women thing. You're a magnificent

Jacques Brel ranges widely

by R. Woodward

Originally put together to make better known in the English speaking world the songs of Belgium songwriter Jacques Brel, "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" is a show consisting of several of his songs with the lyrics translated into English.

forming "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" and the You Are Cabaret Dinner Theatre through December 31 gets more melody from the musical score than many who have seen the show in the past probably ever realized that it contained.

Casts of this show usually seem to consist of actors who can sing a little. Tom Asad, the producer of You Are Cabaret's production, decided to use instead singers who can sing a lot. Asad's casting approach seems to greatly increase the show's musical range.

Except for a bit of spoken commentary and some spoken banter, the show consists entirely of songs. Brel's moody lyrics contain enough vivid imagery, depictions enough of different characters and different situations, that audiences have been Casts of "Jacques Brel...." also not oni, content but wildly usually consist of four singers enthusiastic at having no more (probably because that's how it plot in this musical than a certain was done in New York), but here continuity of outlook that there are five singers to produce appears in moving from one song a fuller, richer sound. The five to another....... adroitly blend and balance their The hard working cast pervoices while moving around the

room to keep the sound coming from all directions.

Donna Christie and Deborah

Hendershot have less solo singing to do than the others but the playgoer is always aware of their presence--not only in the numbers sung by everyone but also during some of the solos of the others when they provide with their voices expressive but unobtrusive background melody.

The memorable tingley effects during the show's finale, at the conclusion of "If We Only Have Love", are due less to the wimpy lyrics than to the contribution these two make to the gorgeous ensemble sound.

In addition to producing a great sound the singers in this production avoid the temptation to which all too many pre-

(Cont'd, page 18)

had not been permitted to be aggressive on stage. New WomIan's Humor is feminist humor. where women are the subject. not the object, of humor.

"The only way women could be aggressive on stage was to be self-hating," she explained. "So, you had to be like Joan Rivers, doing the "ugly jokes' and the 'fat jokes'. You weren't allowed to do 'I am a woman and I am proud' jokes, because it was too threatening. So we (Patti and I) started feminist humor, in about 1969." She incorporated Lesbian themes into her human more recently. She described how she never really had to "come out" when she began doing this. "Everybody knew I was Lesbian," she explained. "I was not in the closet about it. I didn't talk about it, because I didn't know how to make the pain funny. It took until a year and a half ago to be able to talk about it, because humor comes from intense pain."

She spoke about the importance.of.feminism.to.Gay-men, as

(Cont'd, page 17)