Act One of this play introduces us to virtually all the Disney heroines, grown older, plagued by dipsomania, spreading hips, and spousal abuse. It's a delicious conceit, and it offers lots of laughs (and a few clunkers); but the drama of real life remains essentially inert in this cute and clever play.
"Why am I so goddamned dissatisfied?" asks Princess Ella of the Cinders (Carol Nelson), denying herself another glass of wine. (1306 was a very good year!) Unhappily, the play talks too much and reveals too little about the off-stage action.
Cynthia Enfield does her one-note ingenue portrayal of Belle, the Beauty of beastly fame, well enough.
The slight plot centers on getting the character of Belle, the Beauty of beastly fame, played by Cynthia Enfield, to liberate herself from her dictatorial husband. Enfield portrayed overpowerment well, but the transition seemed to elude her.
Aurora, the Beauty who slept too long, describes herself as "all tangles and thorns." She is a foul-mouthed woman who resents the "dewy-eyed ding-dong of royal birth" who wed her. Angela J. Haag has a few nice moments in the part.
Dan Gregry looked the part of Frederic, her erstwhile beast become "the most beautiful man in the world" - a generation later. "Isn't he wonderful?" she asks. Perhaps the character was good enough to master Belle; but the actor's mastery over Frederic was less wonderful.
Dressed and coifed perfectly in sculpted black Snow White hairdo, Ginny Dustin plays a zaftig Bianca. Spitting venom with serene politesse, Dustin was best at catching the campy, dissing humor of the piece, by toasting such lines to perfection as: "I'm Queen now, and she's dust!"
The director made pretty pictures on the beige set by Edmond Ramage, which cut stone illusions nicely through black curtains, and created a wonderful working stairway for a medieval castle. But why a plywood suit of armor? For two dimensions, settle for some tapestries.
The costumes, not quite from attic or thrift shop, were carefully appropriate - except, perhaps, for those plastic slippers that didn't fit the period any better than they fit Cinderella's feet.
The lighting best illuminated off-stage areas, such as a flickering fireplace, or candles coming down the stairs.
Unfortunately, the sound cues (designed by Gerard Drazba) were ill-defined and poorly executed. Music, from baroque, to Strauss, to Stravinsky (what's a 600 year anachronism in a fairy tale?), along with party noises sounding like offstage radios, underplayed some of the action and didn't work.
The play threatens to get serious near the end when someone asks: "Don't you feel like something happened here tonight?" No one seems to agree. Instead, someone says "Let's do lunch" - more suitably frivolous.
The play might make a musical - if they can get there before Disney, who seems to have the corner on dramatizing fairy tales these days.
Copyright 1999 Marshall Yaeger