The battle between the sexes has always been a favorite topic for all types of literary works. With the onslaught in today’s media of how women should look to attract men rather than being true to who they really are, playwright Sheila Callaghan has taken a very personal stand in her madcap new play “Women Laughing Alone With Salad,” now presented in its West Coast premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Directed by Neel Keller, with musical staging by Ken Roht, performances continue through April 3. The gender-bending cast includes Lisa Banes, Nora Kirkpatrick, David Clayton Rogers and Dinora Z. Walcott, all of whom plays both female and male characters!
The story in “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” swirls around a man named Guy and three very different women in his life whose feral drives, distorted priorities and passionate love affairs with salad are driving Guy over the edge. Tossed with Callaghan’s signature bite, humor and rambunctious theatricality, the play explores our image-obsessed culture in a world saturated by social media and seductive marketing.
Act 1 centers on the three women in Guy’s life, his blonde live-in girlfriend Tori (Nora Kirkpatrick), a slim yoga fanatic, Meredith (Dinora Z. Walcott), a free-spirited black woman comfortable with her curves, and his neurotic and youth-obsessed mother Sandy (Lisa Banes) who is willing to try anything to keep her body together and looking as youthful as possible. Poor Guy (David Clayton Rogers) is bounced around between the three, taking whatever he can for his own satisfaction with little regard to the true needs of others. Walcott is an energy-generating force-of-nature when she dances, so much so that Guy invites her home and proceeds to convince Tori to participate in a threesome. The scene is magnificently staged so we know what is going on without the need for any nudity.
After intermission, each of the four actors switches to characters of the opposite sex, four years later. We meet two men working on an ad campaign as they await a meeting with their boss. The two men are played by Walcott and Kirkpatrick convincingly dressed as men, moving like men and engaging in “personal” activities most women believe to be the favorite pastime of every man on the planet. When I spoke with the women after the performance, each told me how much knowledge they gained about male motivation and character when portraying the roles.
Sandy has now passed on and her son Guy, now played by Lisa Banes, works at an advertising firm which attempts to convince women that the products being advertised will do everything from guaranteeing mind-blowing organisms to controlling your metabolism to keep you as slender as you want to be. It’s a panacea, but poor Guy knows there is more to life than this. To facilitate his need for freedom, Rogers portrays Guy’s female boss, dressed to the nines in heels so high it was a wonder he moved so gracefully. In fact, Rogers shared after the performance that he now has a new appreciation for what women go through to make themselves attractive, and has new appreciation for how difficult it really is to walk in heels!
The most amazingly psychedelic scene occurs when Guy is released from his dead-end job and proceeds to think about what he will now be able to do such as playing his beloved Gibson guitar in a rock band and driving wildly in the wind on a motorcycle. Banes is a joy to watch as she displays all the Guy’s soul-freeing spirit. Projection design my Keith Skretch will transport you with Guy along his way to becoming who he was always meant to be.
For me personally, the play spoke to my own experience of being a larger woman in a society that now expects the perfect woman to be a size 2. Like Meredith, I have experienced enough rejection for my size throughout my life and have moved to a place where my confidence and self-acceptance no longer keeps me from going after what I know I can accomplish when others put roadblocks in my way. It’s a much-needed message and I thank Callaghan for addressing it in the play and Neel Keller for making sure the hypocrisy of society’s pressure to conform is shown from both sides of the male-female closet.
“Women Laughing Alone With Salad” tickets are available online at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org, by calling CTG Audience Services at 213-628-2772, in person at the Center Theatre Group box office (at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles) or at the Kirk Douglas Theatre box office two hours prior to performances. The Kirk Douglas Theatre is located at 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. Ample free parking and restaurants are adjacent.