ESCURIAL
The Mosaic Theatre Company would have been hard-pressed to find two more jarringly dissimilar plays: Escurial is a violent, iconoclastic, hyperstylized play by Belgian symbolist Michel de Ghelderode, and Door Number One is a loosely structured, casually acted comedy sketch by Alicia Burns. But though they’re at opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum, the two works do have a common agenda: they examine woman’s place in a male-dominated society. And while the evening as a whole proved shaky, Mosaic did demonstrate two unusual and admirable qualities: first, the courage to tackle a difficult and seldom-produced script–and what could be more difficult to stage than symbolist drama?–and second, an unqualified endorsement of a lesbian-feminist agenda for the theater.
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Of the two, Door Number One proved more successful. This breakneck-paced miniplay takes place in the waiting room of a hospital, where Tom (Robin Malcolm MacDuffie) and Celia (Diana Slickman) await news of Rebecca (Madelyn Spidle), who has been attacked and is currently in surgery. Rebecca is Tom’s sister and Celia’s lover–and therein lies the heart of the conflict. Tom feels overwhelmingly threatened by Celia and Rebecca’s relationship. Though he tries to offer some support to Celia, it is clear that he cannot bring himself to accept the legitimacy of her emotions: he is the one in pain, and Celia’s presence somehow cheapens his trauma. “I don’t want to share Rebecca,” he soliloquizes as the play opens. The result is that Tom patronizes Celia–talks to her like a child, repeats insincere, greeting-card consolations, and withholds from her the “really bad news.”
Like all good satire, the humor in Door Number One arises from familiarity. We have heard and seen all of this before, and the audience is united in saying, “We think these received ideas are ludicrous.” In that sense, Door Number One is liberating.
