Also this issue: Kelly's Girl John Kelly is a man of many faces -- including Joni Mitchell’s. -David Warner Drawing Borders It's Mural Arts Month, and the Mural Arts Program is celebrating new growth and facing new controversy. -Ted Mann Nancy Crow at Snyderman Gallery Form and function collide in Nancy Crow's quilts. -Robin Rice Stan and Jan's Plan -Debra Auspitz Word From Your Mtter -David Warner Balanchine Favorites at Pennsylvania Ballet -Janet Anderson Crowns at McCarter Theatre -Toby Zinman Fully Committed at Philadelphia Theatre Co. -David Anthony Fox

October 24-30, 2002

theater

Eternal Spiral Project's I Stand Before You Naked

by David Anthony Fox

Joyce Carol Oates’ I Stand Before You Naked is a series of 10 monologues for assorted female characters. The format is reminiscent of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series, but the confessional, woman’s-inner-life tone is more like Marsha Norman in her ’Night Mother mode (“naked” in this context means vulnerable).

Though the situations are different, and the 10 women cover a spectrum of age and background, their common ground is maladjustment, discontent, and/or something deeply wrong. Moreover, sexuality (overt or displaced) has played a role in each life. Oates depicts the women more as results of their situations than as fully formed people. Most of the characters are unnamed, and the titles of the monologues are drawn from catalytic phrases ("Little Blood Button," "Nuclear Holocaust").

I'm not generally a fan of the monologue format, which tends to be dramatically inert. But there's something undeniably compelling about Naked that holds our interest. Still, the piece is uneven. Some of the sequences are daring, others are recycled cliches. Sometimes Oates seems to think of herself as the voice of her characters, but at other times we're aware that she's judging them: Most of the women are blue-collar, and there's a distasteful sense of condescension to their religiosity and class.

More problematic, the Naked women seem somehow complicit in their own misery. "One of you's to blame for this," the character of "Little Blood Button" announces at the beginning of the show -- but the piece that follows suggests that's not entirely the case.

Ultimately, it's not clear what Oates wants us to get from Naked. If these women are a random sampling, we're in big trouble -- not one of them will have a positive outcome. But if instead there is something specific that connects them, it's not clear what that is.

One could argue at length about whether Naked is good or bad feminism (or feminism at all). What is undeniable is that it offers fine showcase opportunities for a female theater ensemble. Director Myra Bazell, best known as a movement artist, has given the piece a fluid and elegantly austere production -- the emphasis is on the emotional connection to the material, which is as it should be. Among the gifted group of nine actors, Martha Kemper and Maryann Elder make especially positive impressions. (Jessica Graham does nice work, but she's the only performer to be given two monologues, which feels dramatically disruptive.)