I was on vacation for part of the Rogue Festival and caught a couple of shows at the tail end of the festival. Then, when I came back to work, I got caught up in the crush of upcoming events. But while the Rogue performances are long gone, I wanted to acknowledge two local offerings: Woodward Shakespeare Festival's "The Soaps of Paris," an original play by Thornton Davidson; and a modern-dance concert by Madcompany, under the artistic direction of Michele Ainza.
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THE SOAPS OF PARIS
Whatever the outcome, I think it's exemplary when local companies experiment with original plays. The Woodward Shakespeare Festival is to be commended for encouraging up-and-coming playwrights.
Thornton Davidson obviously had fun packing as much dysfunction as he could into his one-act "The Soaps of Paris." His device is a good one: Use a group-therapy session to showcase a lineup of eccentric characters, then tie the storyline in to a plot thread involving the group leader and her inexperienced intern.
Davidson has a knack for quick, intense character insights as each of the group-therapy patients gets a monologue-like chance in the spotlight. (Among the highlights: Terry Lewis as a world-weary drag queen, Hayley Galbraith as an in-your-face troublemaker and M. Justin Red as a creepy therapy veteran.)
The script wavers in and out of elegance, however, and the larger dramatic through-line -- the story of the group leader and her assistant -- was a little thick and clunky. Director Kate McKnight wasn't able to do much more than truss things up as best she could. It seems as if Davidson has tried to cram too much "stuff" into a one-act format, and as the exposition gets muddier at the end, the "revelations" come across as pat and perfunctory. The biggest appeal of this show is the patients themselves. With their characters, Davidson is really on to something.
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MADCOMPANY
This local modern-dance company offered audiences a program of two pieces. The first had a student-like quality. Artistic director Michele Ainza teaches dance at Fresno City College and is co-artistic director of City Dances, and one of her goals is to develop "professional performance opportunities" for her students. When it comes to the Rogue Festival, you can get into a spirited debate about recital-level quality vs. professional in almost any genre, but I'd make the argument that with this first piece, Ainza didn't meet the threshold for presenting this work before a paying audience.
The second piece really surprised me, however. It was stellar. One of the dancers was Ainza herself. Sporting corporate-style white dress shirts and mostly bare legs, she and her fellow women dancers stomped out a series of intense, lock-step movements -- many of them almost like marching, others aggressively lyrical -- in moves that created a jarring, frosty and conflicted atmosphere. The choreography suggested the clash of gender roles and the shackles of the business world. Several of the dancers used black heeled pumps to great effect, pounding out a clackety rhythm that acted as its own percussive element to the routine. At one point, a woman hurls the pumps, and it made me think: How often do you see real anger in dance? As I said, I was really impressed. Though the show was uneven, I'm looking forward to seeing more of what this local company has to offer.
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