The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 21

The Sacramento Bee Monday March 26 1984 BS Divergent Themes Create Moving Theatrical Experience By Alfred Kay Bee Reviewer Children OF a Lesser which opened Friday at the 24th Street Theater engages our sympathy but does not depend upon it For this award-winning play by Mark Medoff is dramatically compelling and touches the mind and even the funny bone as well as the heart It makes clear that silence golden for this Process Theatre production concerns the problems of a totally deaf young woman who defies help and hides her fears of being thought retarded She is Sarah Norman a 26-year-old cleaning woman in a speech-therapy school who can hear the vibrations of music but not the sounds of words and who does not want to emerge into the normal Twin Bill Is An Unstable Theater Mix Sympathy Or Satire? By John Hurst Bee Reviewer I and the first of two one-act plays on view in the Old Eagle Theatre three women known each other since high school sit on a small-town Texas back porch belting bourbon folding laundry and talking with progressive candor about the men in their lives And in the companion piece in this double bill by playwright James McClure the boys who grew up to become their men loiter out Theater Review Theater Review world at a disadvantage Naturally James Leeds a new teacher wants to help even though Sarah has little interest in producing sounds or even reading lips Thus are two strong wills engaged Do not think however that this is another in which early defeats at physical rehabilitation end in triumph of a Lesser is a more complicated work with a number of divergent themes for Sarah and her benefactor fall in love and marry but do not live happily ever after How could they when James cannot listen to Bach on the phonograph because he looks at his bride and feels guilty a situation that widens the gulf between man and wife and between sound and silence There are other themes too even attempts to organize a deaf rights protest but some of them leave flaws in Medoff unusual work For one thing the play is too long to sustain fully its dramatic qualities and there is the awkward device of James having to interpret to the audience every word that Sarah is describing in sign language therefore carrying on both sides of a dialogue This wears thin on occasion But at its best the play is lyrical wise and poignant with moments of literate humor James can laugh at himself a blessing in the role of a teacher who can play with lives And in a scene with Sarah in a restaurant the best he can do in interpreting the word veal in sign language is to describe it as Best of all is that the production provides two extraordinary performances Sharain Jackson as Sarah must remain mute for all but a few seconds of the play appearing not to react to verbal cues and performing among others as though in a private world She must make her emotions known only through expressions and body movements and she is required to every word with her fingers Jackson whose real mother is deaf (and who is in the play as a grew up with sign language and is apparently skilled enough to keep the many hearing-impaired members of the audiences in their seats throughout the long show Whether mute or in those few seconds when she sobs or lets out sounds to horrify her husband and everybody in the theater she is an excellent actress Paul Ford is similarly fine as James Leeds retaining both the drama and humor of his role and adding to the quality of the production are Arnold Carlson Craig Anthony Pelusi Arden Bauman Mary Lynne Woods and Alexa Lee Gere Route Jackson the deaf mother of Sharain Jackson is courageous in her role of stage mother having the opposite problem of picking up verbal cues and reading lines with a cadence she cannot hear The results of all this may not be for those who want their plays short and direct but for many people of a Lesser could prove a gripping and unusual theatrical experience CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD will be repeated at 8 Thursday Friday and Saturday and April 5 6 and 7 and at 2 Sunday and April 1 at the 24th Street Theater 2791 24th St Information: 739-8785 (voice) or 483-7346 (teletype phone for the deaf) BeeErhardt Krause back of the local bar belting beer and talking with increasing scatology about the women in their lives But far from being prairie-fied remakes of John Ford Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around these plays scenes really are more like comic exercises in points of view The kind of Lawrence Durrell might have written if grown up in rural Texas with a ribald sense of humor In and Laura Flowers Lothian plays an Elizabeth distracted by her errant current absence just been the same since Roy came back from and by her just-discovered pregnancy She barely heeds Lisa garrulous Hattie until the talk turns to their men a Hattie says of Roy man has done more wandering than Lewis and Disinhi-bited by drink the women reminisce exchanging confidences about first loves and high school he was gentle Elizabeth says of Roy "He taught me my Then the one who married for money Joyce ditheringly sensual Amy Lee arrives with some catty gossip about where Roy's been spending his time wearing dress and she flaunts her successful husband Cletis and her country club position before finally staggering homeward hold onto a rueful Hattie counsels Elizabeth the last wild thing left around more blatant comedy in where Jeffrey French plays a drunken Roy light star bright 27th star seen tonight and the excruciatingly funny Ken Thorley is his amiable slightly simple brother Ray Here the talk is only tangentially about post-Vietnam sense of disorientation Most of it is about the girls Roy in high school and inevitably of the still-cherished 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible in whose back seat he acquired that knowledge Enter Cletis perhaps overplayed by Mikol Dill as the kind of squeaky-voiced nerd whose capacity to infuriate Roy just by wearing loaf- Lisa MacKenzie Laura Flowers Lothian one of two one-act plays at the Old and Joyce Budge in and Bour- Eagle Theatre ers has not abated since high school Thus it falls to gentle Ray to pass along the news that' Cletis has borrowed that pink Thunderbird and wrecked it against the only tree within miles Ray does it by first confessing he made love to wife while Roy was in Vietnam This is the better of the two plays The comic sense is stronger here more boisterous It also becomes clear that where the women talked about life the men talk about living But an underlying sense of futility here as there is in the first playlet and therein lies a basic problem with both these one-acts: hard to tell how McClure wants us to feel about his characters Hand in hand with the empathy is a sense of comic condescension Is he poking fun at their lives their thoughts ethics aspirations or simply giving them an exaggerated comic skew? Is he purposely diffusing what sympathy he does muster with his sitcom-style tendency to lampoon their reality? I think the problem lies more in the writing than in the staging for Donna Sparks has done an excellent if sometimes perplexing job of directing a cast whose abilities range from better than adequate to outstanding Thorley is an authentic comic genius Hattie is a comic cornucopia and French gives Roy a Slim Pickins kind of zesty uproar that works just right What perplexes though are Elizabeth how can one so distracted be so easily diverted? and the decision to have Dill play Cletis as a bad parody In this twin bill McClure seems to be inviting at once our sympathy and our ridicule an unstable mix at best LAUNDRY AND BOURBON and LONE STAR will continue at the Old Eagle 925 Front St Fridays and Saturdays at 8 through April 28 Tickets are available at the EMPAC box office (1419 St phone 44-EMPAC) and at BASS ticket outlets Information: 446-6761 Got A Single Redeeming Feature Movie Review By George Williams Bee Reviewer OLEEPAWAY is a mindless and dirty little movie about a series of murders at a summer resort for teens I cannot remember one decent thing about it The photography involves a range of skills from getting the heads of the actors within the frame to having someone vomit into the camera lens It sounds as if half-filled soup cans were used for microphones The acting is sub-junior high The language of the script would make a Marine blush The plot is completely predictable The special effects appear to be assembled from a deserted garbage dump was written and directed by someone named Robert Hiltzik He should be banished from camera-land for life SLEEPAWAY CAMP From United Film Distribution Co a product of American Eagle Films Corp Producers' Michele Tatosian and Jerry Silva Writer-director Robert Hiltzik Music: Edward Bilous Cast: Mike Kellm Katherine Kamhi Paul DeAngelo Jonathan Tier-ston Felissa Rose Christopher Collet Karen Fields Rated (R) State Arden Sunrise and Forty Niner and Sacramento drive-ins Television is on Page A14 Movie Notes are on Page A13 Womens Workout World One Diet Chef Food free a Personalized analysis free Come in now and try Diet Chef Food for an entire day free That means breakfast lunch snack and dinner And get a personalized analysis to find out exactly how Fast Take-Off can work for you Sign up for these free specials by calling the center nearest you Mention 2370 when you call But do it now Offer expires March 31 1984 For your Fast Take-Off (and free specials) Call: LAKECREST VILLAGE 1036 Florin Rd Sacramento (916)391-3073 PLACER CENTER PLAZA 1725 Sierra Gardens Dr Ste A-1 Off Douglas Blvd near Mervyn's Roseville (916)781-3222 SUMMER HILLS PLAZA 7851 Lichen Dr Citrus Heights (916)726-2424 IS HERE NOW! WITH 6 SALONS TO HELP YOU GET READY TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF ALL THE NEW OPPORTUNITIES EMERGING FOR WOMEN IN 1984 AT PRE-EXPANSION SAVINGS JX ONLY PER YEAR NO MONTHLY FEES REGISTRATION FEE THE COMPLETE PROGRAM AEROBICS AND AEROBIC DANCE UNLIMITED VISITS ACTIVE EXERCISE CLASSES SPECIALIZED EQUIPMENT INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTION NUTRITIONAL GUIDANCE GEARED TO ALL AGES SAUNA SHOWERS LOCKERS COMING SOON pancakes to chili to cupcakes And there one meal that takes more than five minutes to fix The Better Eating Skills Training a lot of blue-sky talk Ifs new ways to handle real problems like peer pressure and over-abundant restaurant meals Still hesitating? Come in meet your counselor get a free evaluation' and free meals for one full day We think that one day will convince you to spend the next four weeks on your Fast Take-Off So call now Fast Take-Off is fast but it can't even start until you pick up that phone Get rid of those extra pounds Lose up to 15 pounds in four weeks or less on Fast Take-Off Here's how Fast Take-Off works: You have your own counselor to call on for support anytime You eat three well-balanced meals of Diet Food every day You get tips on weight control at our BEST (Better Eating Skills Trainingpseminars And you get a price that's based on the fact you to lose Now why it works: Our counselors understand You see many of them were once overweight themselves The Diet Chef Food is easy to stick with what used to eating from (FORMERLY ELAINE POWERS) CALL NOW FOR A FREE SALON TOUR! JIIH FREEPORT UVD RANCHO CORDOVA 454-4106 452-5532 361-0251 DAVIS MARCONI UAH CITRUS HEIGHTS 753-1200 401-8230 723-2430 WOMAN'S WORKOUT WORLD WE RE OPEN EVENINGS AND SATURDAYS TOO Ftoopie ore different Some to less Others lose more But tf you stick with the Comotion (Pogrom it can work for you Umrt one otter per person 1984 Carnation Company -W-.