ONE ACT PLAYS & MONOLOGUES
by Bruce
Kane
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After Dark: Can't get her out of
our heads
By Brent Hallenbeck
Free Press Staff Writer
So why are we so obsessed with Cinderella?
Why has she been seen in and around Burlington more often this spring than Howard
Dean, who actually lives here and not in the Enchanted Kingdom or wherever the
heck Cinderella calls home?
Cinderella is in town again this weekend at Burlington City Hall, where Theatre
on a Shoestring is putting on an evening of four one-act comedies, one of which
features the princess herself. The productions opened Thursday in Contois Auditorium
and conclude tonight.
We've seen the gamut of theatrical Cinderella incarnations in the past few weeks.
Lyric Theatre opted for the familiar Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein
musical named for her. That's the Cinderella who's beautiful and graceful and
wide-eyed, the one who falls in love with the perfect man against all odds and
lives happily ever after.
St. Michael's College presented Stephen Sondheim's musical "Into the Woods,"
which tells the story of what becomes of famous fairy-tale characters after
happily ever after. That Cinderella is still beautiful, still graceful, still
wide-eyed, but she's also a resigned realist, in that way only a princess can
be after her charming prince turns out to be a philandering cad.
Now, Theatre on a Shoestring gives us "Cindy and Julie," a one-act play in which
Cinderella and Juliet commiserate in their psychiatrist's waiting room about
what jerks Prince Charming and Romeo turned out to be. "Cindy and Julie" provides
the painstaking post-game analysis of love behaving badly, debunking any lingering
myth that idealized romance is possible.
So, yeah, why are we as a culture -- a theater culture, anyway -- so obsessed
with Cinderella? In the Rodgers and Hammerstein version, does she represent
the quintessential story of the love we all hope to attain, the love that best
sums up human existence? Does Sondheim create a Cinderella who reminds us of
that too-perfect princess we knew in high school, so we can finally tear her
little playhouse down? Does playwright Bruce Kane give us a "Cindy" who reflects
our 21st-century, been-there-done-that coolness, one who's so cynical and bitter
that there's no room, never will be any room, for love again?
"Happily ever after. What a load of crap," Cindy (played by Blythe Usher) tells
Julie (Jennifer Gelb Carbee) with a voice hard enough to shatter a glass slipper.
The evening of one-acts includes Kent Broadhurst's "The Eye of the Beholder,"
which doles out mounds of pretentious twaddle in a vain attempt to define art.
It also has nothing in common thematically with "Cindy and Julie" or the other
two thoughtful plays written by Kane.
"Under the Balcony" shows what might have happened if Casanova (Clem Turmel)
got hold of Romeo (Kevin Bosley) when light through yonder window broke, then
applied his seducing ways to Romeo's pure romantic inclinations. "Prince Charming's
Complaint" is a one-man one-act in which the charming one (Ken LaBrie) recounts
his failed loves with Rapunzel (cut her hair after they married), Snow White
(not so chaste after all, considering those seven short guys she shacked up
with) and Sleeping Beauty (took the sleeping in "sleeping together" too literally).
"You can't," Prince Charming moans, "make them happy ever after."
By the end of the play, though, he admits he's fallen for another woman. She's
a mysterious, enchanting woman, one who fled at midnight and left behind a lone
glass slipper ...
Prince Charming might not be happy ever after. But there's something to be said
for hopeful ever after.
One
Act Plays & Monologues
kaneprod.com