Entertainment :: Theatre
The Superheroine Monologues by Kay Bourne
EDGE ContributorSunday Apr 19, 2009 Quiet as it’s been kept, the comic book super heroines grapple with personal issues. Even as they battle monstrous evil-doers! These psychological Achilles heels in our beloved American cartoon figures are shrewdly analyzed by parodists Rich Park and John Kuntz in a docu-drama that is a pioneering work in the league, say, of "Three Faces of Eve." Or, just a hellava lot of fun, depending on how you want to take it.
A sparkling cast of eight fit and feisty women, with generous assists from a doofus ensemble of three rather less prepossessing men, enact the saga of the campy The Superheroine Monologues. The peppy spoof continues through April 26, in performance Weds. thru Sun with Sat. and Sun matinees at the Boston Playwrights Theater, 949 Commonweath Ave. in Boston a few blocks south of the B.U. Bridge.
From the nascent setting of Paradise Island (so called by its Amazon women denizens because men have been banished or never set foot on its shores) to Vegas of the present, the Superheroine timeline goes from the WWII years, 1941, to today’s "Paradise Lost." If not quite an epic of Miltonian dimensions, there are snakes aplenty throughout the decades with intrusive journalists in an age of celebrity oriented news the uber vipers.
Back in the 1940s Maureen Aducci, a Bette Davis look alike, makes an imperious Hipppolyta, reining in her inclination to mercilessly neuter an airplane pilot flying a mission against the Nazis who has plummeted into her domain. Shawna O’Brien is fine as her daughter who is strangely attracted to this creature her mother sneeringly informs her is a man. Moreover, the daughter is convinced of the nobility of his goal to eradicate the Nazi threat to world peace. She repeatedly saves the day as Wonder Woman, but it’s a harder go partnering up with the pilot, well done by Terrence P. Haddad, who’s a lot less acquiescent on his own turf.
By 1954, the war now over, evil has reasserted itself in terms of greed and plain old meanness. Amanda Good Hennessey is a dandy Lois Lane, the capable crime reporter smitten with Superman played with amusing self importance by Art Hennessey, one of the ensemble foils.
In a sequence set in 1968 (at the height of the first "Batman" craze), Elizabeth Brunette is excellent as the eccentric Catwoman on the prowl, with the delightful Jordan Harrison is one of her side cats; while Melissa Baroni as Batgirl morosely ponders the purity of life in a snow globe. By 1989 we’ve entered the era of the Valley Girl with Supergirl, nicely played by the pert Jackie McCoy bemoaning the popularity contest of her life amongst bubble headed peers, although on the plus side discovering a sexuality that easily skips the football heroes of her high school.
In the 1990s, the comics responded to the cries of Black Pride to provide a role model with Storm, the first African American superheroine, deftly portrayed by Cheryl D. Singleton. With an African background (and until the demise of her strong black male hubby, wandering the desert lands), she is taken under the wing of the wheel chair bound Professor X, a powerful mutant telepath who lives in a New York suburb where he directs Storm in her adventures. "Torn between love and duty, and duty pulls harder on my cage," laments Storm. Or did she say "rage?" which suits the African American aspect of this super figure better.
Christine Power plays the haunted Phoenix with gothic zeal. Burdened by a rapacious mother, Phoenix is also in the thrall of Professor X. She’s even more burdened by a mental illness instigated by a mutant named Mastermind. Phoenix, sometimes known as Dark Phoenix, is a founding member of the X Men. So Wilkie Collins. So Sigmund Freud. So Christine Crawford.
The chronology of the women who protected the world from villains even while they nursed personal wounds is superlatively directed by Greg Maraio who keeps the action figures hopping. He also shows his own super heroic powers by providing the hip costume design and construction heavy on the spandex and spangles and gloriously eye catching in those bold colors that blaze in the memory of comic books collectors. The tireless Maraio also did the clever scenic design (with Jared Fennelly) that provides marvelously telltale backdrops to every heroine’s story with whimsical touches even to talking Ionic pedestals in the Grecian like intro.
P. J. Strachman’s lighting is very helpful in setting the mood from the sunny shores of the Caribbean Ocean to the dark hallways of a house on the Hudson River.
It’s all in good fun, but even so, "The Superheroines Monologues," presented by Phoenix Theatre Artists & Company One, might also be taken to heart for its insightful socio-commentary. These female champion’s anxieties and achievements capsulate American pop culture as it has slowly, ever so slowly, come to make room for the liberated woman. In truth, the reminders of the hardships women have been put through provide the poignant aspect to this comic romp giving the play depth it benefits from.
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