THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS
AIRDATE: August 01, 2003
The come-hither voice, the platinum
hair, the swaggering gait, the corseted, buxom figure. They were unmistakable,
and easy to impersonate. But the real thing was The Real Thing… well, more or
less. In 1893, Mary Jane West was born a dirty blonde, but she refashioned
herself as a solid-gold bombshell.
In Claudia Shear's play, "Dirty
Blonde," we watch Mae West evolve from a third-rate vaudevillian into a
legend -- completely self-styled, self-driven and self-involved. She was one of
the first real feminists, a take-no-prisoners self-promoter who wrote her own
material, produced her own shows, flouted all convention (including marriage),
courted controversy, hung with outcasts, and went to jail on obscenity charges.
By 1935, she was the highest paid woman in the country.
Shear's play, which was a surprise hit
on Broadway, is making its debut at the Old Globe Theatre, starring the
much-loved San Diego native, Kathy Najimy. The piece gives us the
acts-and-facts of West's story, but not much of her inner life or motivations.
We get a glimpse of her open-mindedness, generosity, quick-wittedness and
dogged determination. And we see that, once she created her famous persona, she
refused to let it go, even appearing in a movie at age 85, still trying,
pathetically, to be a vixen. She had to be propped up in her dotage, but she
was gussied up like a vamp. She became a caricature of herself, which is often
how she's remembered. But she really was an original.
Despite all this juicy material, the
most interesting part of Shear's play is the parallel world it creates: the
love story between two modern-day Mae West fans who meet at her gravesite on
her birthday. Outsiders themselves, they've both nurtured the moxie of Mae, and
they help each other to let it all hang out. The piece flip-flops in time, and
Najimy darts back and forth from one era and character to the other, playing
the inimitable West and her 'tough-girl' admirer. It's a terrific, nuanced and
engaging performance, excellently matched by those of Bob Stillman, a
rubber-limbed chameleon who plays a mean piano, and Kevin Chamberlin, who
morphs into a sad-sack loser, a boxer or a chorine with a twist of his big,
bald head. The show is an actor's dream, and reprising their Broadway
portrayals, each is spectacular. Though the men are the fireflies whirling
around Mae's dazzling light, we learn more about them than we do either of the women.
Ultimately, it's Chamberlain who breaks our hearts, with his sad-sack demeanor
and his long-hidden longings and secrets regarding Mae. The direction, by James
Lapine and Gareth Hendee, is wonderfully inventive, with remarkable,
ever-changing lighting by David Lander. Though the play may be flawed, it
stands up well to a West philosophy: "It's better to be looked over than
overlooked."
©2003
Patté Productions Inc.