MRS. CALIFORNIA
There are a few grains of truth amid the fluff that fills Mrs. California. You have to sit longer than you should through this not very original play before you find them, but they’re definitely there.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
If you saw Smile, the 1975 film spoof of beauty pageants, you can imagine the one-upwomanship that follows. This salute to brain-damaged domesticity is not as wholesome as it looks at first, particularly since we see it through the ever-more-open eyes of Dottie Baker, aka Mrs. Los Angeles. A peppy blend of Betty Crocker, Doris Day, and Suzie Creamcheese, Dot is not as happy as she looks. Although Dudley, her gas-company sponsor, desperately tries to coach her into giving the right answers, Dottie would rather declare as the proudest moment of her life the time during World War II when her quick action as a message decoder saved American ships from attack by Nazi subs. The war’s over, however, and now the approved answer is a gushy something about how she’s honest-to-God proudest of the members of her family and the chance they give her to bask vicariously in their success. Self-effacement as a domestic duty.
Glowing with the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, Kimberly Muller makes a pretty, pert, and eventually real Dot as she becomes more like Wendy Goeldner’s sassy, schizoid Babs. (When Goeldner really skewers the contest near the end, it’s the show’s funniest subversion.) Gail Trotter, Miriam Kouzel, and Lisa Collins all have their moments as the smiling, sanitized ninnies who compete with Dottie (they are the former winners of the Miss Trust, Miss Giving, and Miss Demeanor contests). And Patrick M.J. Finerty is suitably slimy as Dottie’s homily-spouting sponsor.
Developed by its director, Bob Curry, and actor Zaid Farid from stories Hughes wrote in the 40s for the Chicago Defender, Riffin’ is a lively, sometimes bittersweet 75-minute conversational duet performed by opposites who attract.
For the same idealistic reason that motivated the old artist, Lang, a young artist, wants his friend Semple to find a dream that will pull him out of his anger at whites. When he’s alone, Lang quietly reads Hughes’s great poem about what happens to a “dream deferred.” It’s as if he were asking: what will Semple do? Will he dry up like a raisin in the sun–or explode?
