Rules for Good Manners in the Modern World
Trap Door Theatre
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Lagarce’s play (performed here in a translation by Andrew Berg and Marion Schoevaert) focuses on baptisms, weddings, and funerals. This U.S. premiere by TUTA (The Utopian Theatre Asylum)–staged as part of Playing French, the citywide festival of contemporary plays from France–accentuates the script’s tripartite structure by dividing the piece among three actresses. Only two of them actually speak, but under Zeljko Djukic’s carefully choreographed direction, they’re all in admirable sync. Natasha Vuchurovich Djukic’s set cleverly expresses women’s need to be simultaneously aware of themselves and of the judgment of the world: the audience is seated on either side of a raised platform resembling a fashion-show catwalk, with distorting fun house mirrors at either end of the playing area. Her costumes are beautifully off-kilter versions of Edwardian finery, abounding in ruffles and corsets and high collars but with fishnets and swirling patterned hose underneath, suggesting the hidden wild side of femininity.
Jennifer Byers takes the helm for the middle section, focused on a woman’s real career: getting married. The most important consideration, of course, is money. “Men of mediocre means shouldn’t volunteer for anything–godfather, fiance, head of household. It’s all for the best.” The preparations leading up to the wedding day are as complex as the plans for D-day and no less fraught with peril. Byers’s wide-eyed approach to the baroness’s myriad dicta is a suitable counterpoint to Martin’s sardonic, world-weary tone.
Worley plays Lais, Arrabal’s Norma Desmond-like star, ensconced in her home with a small herd of sheep, a lustful monkey, and her tormented memories of convent school and her conflicted love for a classmate and a mysterious older man, Teloc. Her reveries are occasionally interrupted by phone calls from a smarmy entertainment reporter on a This Is Your Life-type program, who pulls up “audience members” (all played with over-the-top comic verve by Carolyn Shoemaker) to ask questions that send Lais even deeper into her psychic nightmare.
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