ISADORA DUNCAN SLEEPS WITH THE RUSSIAN NAVY
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This Attitude is brought to bear on the life and loves of Isadora Duncan, the legendary free spirit, whose own loosely draped torso danced its way across stages and beds on two continents. Of course, Duncan had a head, too–in which she formulated nothing less than a revolutionary new aesthetic for the dance. But that’s not a major concern here. To the contrary, Duncan’s actual achievements are treated as a kooky sort of beatnik thing she did between assignations. Her best thoughts get choked off at the neck, as it were, and she ends up coming across as a rebel without a concept. A crusading libido. A cross between Joan of Arc and Terry Southern’s Candy.
Which is fine, I guess, as long as all we’re after is a cartoon Isadora, good for laughs. But Wanshel’s script pretends to a high seriousness as well. Isadora’s story is counterpoised against the tale of a writer who’s been assigned to work up a screenplay about her; boozy, filthy, hounded by self- loathing and by the philistine demands of the movie executives who’ve bought him, the writer begins to admire Isadora’s integrity, her sense of the sacredness of art, her refusal to compromise. Before long, he’s come to regard her as his saint and salvation. He even tries standing up to the movie execs.
IMPROVISATION, OR THE SHEPHERD’S CHAMELEON
Cesear’s Forum at the Playwrights’ Center
