by J Hunter.
You’re probably familiar with Kathy Najimy through her film work (most notably “Hocus Pocus”), and you may know Mo Gaffney from her short stint on “Absolutely Fabulous.” For us older folks, though, they popped up off-Broadway at the end of the ’80s with the two-woman show “The Kathy & Mo Show: Parallel Lives.” Albany Civic Theater has turned “Parallel Lives” into a side-splitting ensemble piece that is an outstanding season opener for ACT.
Director Amanda Dorman makes her first choice right out of the gate, and it makes a funny scene even funnier. In the opening to the 1991 HBO Special “Parallel Lives,” Najimy & Gaffney mirror the Raphael masterpiece “Two Cherubs” as they play angels who have had a bit of fun designing the human race – including “letting the male ego run wild” and having women give birth “through a very tiny opening!”
Dorman literally shoots the scene into outer space, turning Katie Weinberg and Amanda Conlon into many-eyed, helium-voiced aliens with a really dark sense of humor, both of them lit brilliantly (from above and below) by Oona Newman. The short “callback scene” at the start of Act Two has the horrified aliens observing the results of their work, most notably women’s reaction to the angels’ birthing process. As Conlon’s extremely nasal alien puts it most eloquently, “THEY’RE PISSED!”
The primary goal of “Parallel Lives” is to show us that women are essentially shoveling sand against the tide from the jump, always needing to (Read: “being forced to”) fit into the round holes – no matter what shape the women happen to be. Conlon hits another scene out of the park with a pantomimed “beauty routine” that is both hilarious and horrific. The classical music accompanying the scene (introduced by Mary Darcy, in her Morning Radio Host bag) turns it into a ballet that comes within shouting distance of the macabre.
I never waste any chance to see Josephine Tracey work her comic talents, and she is in her glory here, all while keeping her characters out of the stereotypical. Her spaced-out sister at a grandmother’s wake (“Oh, I can’t eat anything with a nervous system!”) is right on the money; her shock at her first visit to a gay bar is painfully suburban (“Their parents must not have given them money or something!”); and her horror as a little girl in Catholic Church is frighteningly genuine when she hears her friend (played by Katie) declare loudly, “I don’t WANNA be a sister! I wanna be a PRIEST!”
Rita Machin and Debra Burger round out the cast with their own comic moments, one of which has them as Brooklyn senior citizens – complete with fake-fur stoles – attending a feminist performance at a health-food restaurant as part of their Women’s Studies class. The women crack themselves up as we crack up watching them navigate the menu (which we are told is carved on a tree stump). But the scene goes from funny to tender as Burger talks about visiting her nephew and his roommate, which leads into a touching coming-out story that makes you hold your breath in 2026. Machin’s peppy moderator is just one of the cascade of laughs that comes from the support group for Disney princesses. (“Hi, I’m Barbara, mother of Cinder. Cinderella. I’m Barbara Ella…”)
Aside from the lighting inside the huge box that acts as a performance space within a performance space, Dorman and Adam Coons have successfully collaborated on a bare-bones set design that supports the cast while staying out of the way. Another slightly smaller black box acted as both the front of the bar for barflies Conlon and Tracey, and as the back of the bar for Weinberg and Burger in another scene as performers who’ve been left behind by time. There are no props, and everyone is dressed in (basically) the same black outfit. In short, Dorman has made sure nothing gets in the way of the women on stage and the various lessons they teach us over the course of two hours (with one intermission).
Barry Streifort’s spot-on sound design starts working us as soon as the doors open, leading us into the theater with Nancy Sinatra’s instant classic “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” It’s an all-woman pre-show, with artists ranging from Pink to Patsy Cline to Enya to (GASP!) Tiffany! Kenny Rogers’ classic ballad “Lady” sets up dueling monologues between a Rogers devotee (Weinberg) and a “veteran” prostitute (Burger). Waylon Jennings’ winsome “Luckenbach, Texas” introduces the funny-cum-sad barroom scene where Conlon (as an increasingly drunk Texas male) tries to pick up Tracey with slight variations on the phrase, “You look very very pretty tonight!”
I will say the closing scene didn’t work for me, if only because it seemed like Najimy and Gaffney couldn’t quite figure out how to wrap it all up. For me, all the cast had to do was step to the front of the stage and shout (in unison, just like their final bows), “THIS IS THE SH** WOMEN HAVE TO PUT UP WITH – EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!” Hey, it’s not slander if it’s true. And while “Parallel Lives” may have been written nearly forty years ago, so much in the show easily translates to today. That’s sad on one level, as it means women’s lot in life has not advanced as much as we like to think. That said, this play has messages that still need to be sent, and Amanda Dorman has built a fine group of messengers that bring it like it’s 1989.
Albany Civic Theater presents “Parallel Lives” by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, September 23 – 27 and October 2 -4. For tickets and show times, go to www.albanycivictheater.org.
