|
          |
|
|
| |
Gen LeRoy's Carbonell Award Winner
NOT WAVING...
April 23 - May 23, 1999
Hilah Elkins and Greeta AhartThanks to Leo Stutzin of the Modesto Bee and to the Stockton Record and Sonora Union Democrat for these great reviews:
Looniness, Laughs on Sonora Stage
By LEO STUTZIN
(Published in the Modesto Bee Wednesday, April 28, 1999)
SONORA -- Nicole Garfield is a head case, clinically. When she can function at all, she's totally manic. Her heart may be in the right place, overflowing with commitment to justice, compassion and reverence for the environment, but her head isn't screwed on quite right. She needs help, and repeatedly gets it in mental hospitals.
Gabby, her mother, is totally sane by common standards. A quiet and conventional woman, she would hardly dream of asking a waiter to take back a dish she didn't order, let alone make a public spectacle of herself.
They're the protagonists of Gen LeRoy's "Not Waving ... ," which opened Friday at Stage 3. As played Greeta Ahart and Hilah Elkins, with sympathy and off-the-wall wackiness, they frequently brought down the house.
"Not Waving ... " opens with Gabby (Elkins) retrieving Nicole from a mental hospital, which is run by as testy a shrink as we'll never meet.
Gabby is determined to do whatever she can to help her daughter recover from the latest in a lifetime of stressed-out episodes, this one provoked by a divorce and the loss of a custody battle.
The object of the psyche-shaking legal dispute -- which is resolved through judicial wisdom worthy of Solomon -- is the family cat.
So mother takes daughter to a Polynesian pizza house, where daughter not only displays her unbroken spirit by demanding a replacement for the wrong pizza but goes a step further when she discovers an ant in the substitute dish: She calls for a demonstration against the bug-pushers who run the place.
Mama can only cringe while looking on.
A bit of a wimp from the start, Gabby slowly transforms from a captive of society's restrictive norms to a captive -- and mimic -- of Nicole's righteous aggressiveness.
Getting to that point carries the women and everyone they meet through a series of absurdist adventures that had Friday's audience rocking and roaring.
The best-developed is a catnapping that must be history's craziest, leading the women from a pitch-black basement to a narrow ledge, high above the roars of traffic on a New York street, in stealthy and stumbly pursuit of their prey. It brims with echoes of B-grade mysteries and such parodies of adventure flicks as Paula Vogel's "The Baltimore Waltz."
The zaniness was directed in brisk and fluid fashion by Ellen Brooks, a foothill newcomer with many years of credits as an actress and director in the Bay Area.
From the Stockton Record: 4/26/99
"Both women (Hilah Elkins and Greeta Ahart) give fine performances. Direction is solid, pacing appropriate, staging creatively abstract."
From the The Union Democrat: 4/30/99
"Not Waving" may be the funniest look at mental illness ever produced….Stage 3 Theatre Company scores again….Elkins gives a smoldering performance as Gabby, bringing her to tangible life as she rejects the shelter of conformity for the vitality of free expression…Ahart provides the non-stop fireworks, convincing us that life is more than passive existence…a virtuoso performance."
