FEMALE PARTS
You’ve come a long way, baby. Or so the Virginia Slims ads tell us. But Clarence Thomas is preparing his ascent to the Supreme Court even though he hasn’t revealed his position on women’s reproductive rights. N.W.A., Ice Cube, and Andrew Dice Clay are raking in millions with their misogynist diatribes. Rush Limbaugh, ranting and raving daily about “feminazis,” is one of our country’s most popular radio talk-show hosts. The list goes on, but it’s too depressing to itemize.
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On paper, “Waking Up” is not much more than a portrait of a frazzled woman waking up, getting ready for work, and finding out that it’s Sunday. The woman is the living picture of a chicken with its head cut off. The lights go up on her in bed. She wakes up screaming, picks up her baby, changes its diaper, tries to dust the child with talcum powder, finds out that it’s parmesan cheese, dresses the baby, washes her own face, sprays on deodorant, finds out that it’s silver paint, then goes on a mad hunt to find her key, searching for it in the refrigerator, in the box of detergent, and in the container of bicarbonate of soda. Throughout the monologue, she recalls arguments she had with her butthead of a companion, Luigi. It sounds like pretty silly stuff, but the frantic pace of the monologue, its hilarious slapstick comedy, and the pathetic reality of a working-class woman who has nothing to look forward to other than Sundays and sleep make it mesmerizing.
No one is safe from criticism in Female Parts. Doctors, sexist males, so-called sensitive males, religious figures, and multinational corporations are all given the finger. In just over an hour, our patriarchal society is slammed mercilessly to the ground. The audience, after taking time to recover from one of Rame and Fo’s elaborate dick jokes, is forced to do some serious thinking about our society, which still routinely exploits women in the workplace, the bedroom, and the kitchen.
Sassone takes as inspiration Woolf’s contention that if Shakespeare had had a sister as brilliant as he, she would have led a miserable life, beaten by her father, abused by other men, and eventually taking her own life. In her script, Sassone uses a great deal from Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and some of Judith Shakespeare’s brother’s works.
The play is also in need of an editor. It runs over two hours without intermission, and as the time approached ten, I wasn’t thinking about the play but about what I wanted for dinner.
