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Oedipus' women portray their side in tragedy
`Jocasta' tells with humor, fresh perspective a tale of horrifying incest at festival

BY ELAINE GUREGIAN
Beacon Journal staff writer

 

You think you have trouble with your mother? Be glad you're not Jocasta, Queen of Thebes. Your mother never heard from an oracle that you were going to have a baby and put it out on a mountainside to die. And she didn't keep the information to herself, letting you go ahead and have the baby anyway, did she?

If Oedipus Rex is a tragedy told from a man's point of view, Kent playwright Sandra Perlman claims equal time for the women in Oedipus' life and injects humor into the Greek tragedy with her play, Jocasta, which premiered Wednesday at the Next Stage Festival of New Plays at the Cleveland Play House.

With just the characters of Jocasta (Laura Perrotta), her randy, overbearing mother, Ismene (Catherine Albers) and her loyal servant, Iris (the wide-eyed Erin Hurley), Perlman sketches a complex portrait of a daughter, wife and queen who suffered in each of her roles.

This is the sixth year of the festival, which is an incubator of new works. The best plays are culled from public readings, then developed into full productions in following years. Perlman's play had its debut at a festival reading in 1998.

It's hard to imagine a more nurturing atmosphere than the womb-like setting of the tiny Studio One Theatre, where the audience sits on rising banks of seats on three sides of the performance area. The place was nearly full, with around 100 people. Except for laughing a lot, no one in the audience seemed to take a breath.

Perlman set her story with a few Jazz Age props. Charlotte Yetman created luxurious slinky period costumes. Sound designer Richard Ingraham added the occasional musical backdrop of a jazz singer crooning a song, such as In My Solitude. The clean, elegant approach by scene and lighting designer Michael Roesch complemented Perrotta's delicately regal looks.

The 1920s vintage setting is a bit of a red herring, since Jocasta and her mother have a sense of themselves that is quite contemporary. The first scene is the more powerful of the two, showing the women in Jocasta's bedroom on the eve of Jocasta's marriage to Oedipus.

The long-suffering Jocasta is a tad too perfect, as if the play had been written from her diary entries without any rebuttals from the mother. Still, you have to watch in fascination at what a horror this mother is, bossing around her daughter and teasing her about her wedding night. (``He has a lovely singing voice,'' she says with a smarmy smile and a gyration of her hips.)

And it's clear from Jocasta's wistful expression that she wishes she could just accept her mother instead of being irritated by her.

If the exchange sounds familiar, it's because Perlman has a good, honest ear for dialogue. Director Eric Schmiedl lets things develop in an unstrained manner. The comfortable cadence of Albers and Perrotta's conversation went a long way to make their discussion believable, despite the incredible story that was unfolding.

Mad scenes are always risky. Although it's understandable that Jocasta would freak out when she realized she had married her own son -- the same one she thought she had killed -- and had borne four children by him, her hallucination in the second act didn't ring true. That's a minor failing, though, in a play that has a fresh and compelling point of view.

Elaine Guregian can be reached by phone at 330-996-3574, e-mail at eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com or fax at 330-376-9235.

 

Theatre Notes

By Kerry Clawson Akron Beacon Journal March 8, 2001 Cleveland Play House's seventh annual Next Stage Festival of New Plays kicked off yesterday with the world premiere of Jocasta, by Kent playwright Sandra Perlman. This year, the festival includes two full world premiere productions as well as a workshop and four readings of new plays. The workshops and readings ­ which have no costumes or sets and have actors holding their scripts ­ give playwrights the valuable chance to receive audience feedback after the performances, which helps them to continue developing their plays. Cleveland Play House officials read hundreds of scripts yearly, also approaching playwrights and using the theater's own associate artists to find material for the festival. The field is narrowed down to the top 15 to 20 choices some four months before the festival. "The Next Stage Festival is really the pipeline for us to find the work, meet the playwrights and develop new plays," artistic director Peter Hackett said "We pick plays that we think our audiences are going to like in Cleveland." Among the workshops and readings developed this year at Cleveland Play House, one will appear as a fully staged premiere next year. Perlman's Jocasta was first heard as a reading at the 1998 festival. It's a modern retelling of the Oedipus myth from the perspective of Jocasta, queen of Thebes. Perlman is a founding member of the Cleveland Playhouse's Playwrights Unit. Her plays have been produced at theaters across the country, and in the area at Dobama and Porthouse Theatre.

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Last update March, 2001