Paula Vogel’s “The Oldest Profession”, focuses
on five aging prostitutes who strive to uphold standards of refinement and
dignity for their trade, while turning tricks among a dwindling clientele of
respectable older men. The script was first performed in 1988 and later became a comic movie. Many of the references are dated and sail blithely
over the heads of younger audience members who have little or no historical
knowledge of the landmarks, people or terms and language of the prostitution
trade as it existed in the 1980’s.
Though the material is out of date, it is still rich with funny
one-liners and sarcastic zingers.
Linda Goodwin (Ursula), Linda Browning
(Mae), Terry Sullivan (Lillian) and Kathy Sturm) (Edna) are friends of
mine. I have seen them all in several
shows, and I consider them some of the finest actresses in Central Ohio. But they seemed a little sluggish in this
piece. Browning has excellent
characterization but she is obviously struggling to remember the lines and
stumbles a bit. Sullivan is pretty and perky with good stage presence. Goodwin does
a great job of capturing the nuances of the bossy, bitchy Ursula. Sturm is the
best of all with spot-on gestures and facial expression. Tobi Gerber (Vera) manages
to hold her own, but after a while I got tired of her monotonous whiny vocal
tones.
The action is centered around a New York
City park bench. The ladies spend most of their time sitting on that bench as
they deliver the lines. While they do a
reasonable job of shifting around to face each other and use gestures and
facial expressions to break up the bench monotony, at a certain point it does
become somewhat boring. In general, the pacing was slow and lacked energy, though
everybody did a decent job of enunciating the words as they delivered their
lines. Usually slow pacing and lagging
energy are a director’s problem. In this case, I also blame the audience for
much of the lethargy. Friday night’s performance
only had about 15 people, and those in attendance were unresponsive. The cast just was not getting anything from
us as an audience. Though, it could be
the old chicken and egg conundrum: “If
the performance had been better paced and crisper, the audience might have been
more enthusiastic.” Good directors and
top-notch ensembles can energize each other and themselves to keep things
flowing even when the audience is not with them.
The costuming and make-up is especially
attractive and catching. From Mae’s bright red dress and purse contrasted to
her white fur as the head madam, to
Edna’s bright blue spangled stiletto heels and everybody’s wigs, heavy makeup,
flashy sunglasses and the white angel dresses for the ones who have passed on –
it is outstanding and truly sets a great tone for the piece. The program doesn’t list a costuming credit,
so I am guessing the ladies produced much of this from their own closets. And I know that Smith is an accomplished
costumer in addition to his credits as director and set designer.
“Eclipse” is a new community theatre troupe
in Central Ohio. This is their first
production. They rent a small store front in an office complex off Lakeview
Boulevard in Worthington. It makes a
nice, intimate little Black Box space which will seat about 50 people.
According to Smith, Eclipse’s mission is to
perform established pieces that would probably not otherwise get seen in
Central Ohio. Though I would
respectfully suggest that shows like “The Oldest Profession” are not performed
because they are outdated and will not have wide appeal for that reason.
The troupe has a capable, experienced core
group in Smith, Sturm and Geri Martin among its founders. I wish them well and hope that they can
generate larger, more enthusiastic audiences for their work.
