PORTRAIT OF A SHIKSA
Portrait of a Shiksa begins with sexy teenage Adelle accompanying her lumpy, loving mama on a “Footsteps of Jesus” tour of Israel. For Adelle, the trip is just a nice free vacation, a relief from her daily grind of styling human-hair wigs in her family’s garage in little ol’ Calhoun, Tennessee. For Mama, a card-carrying member of the BBB Club (that’s Bring Back the Bakkers), the journey is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to walk where her savior walked and bathe where he bathed. If Adelle doesn’t share the faith, she can at least take a snapshot of Mama standing in the River Jordan or carrying a cross through the streets of Jerusalem.
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So are the performances coaxed from the four-person cast by director Mary McAuliffe. As Mama, Maripat Donovan is sheer delight: a very sweet woman who just happens to be a small-minded bigot and whose dependence on religion makes her a pathetically perfect mark for the money grubbers and headline grabbers who try to dominate evangelical Christianity. Long-legged, beautiful Catherine Evans has a perfect Priscilla Presley pout as sexy, snotty, insecure Adelle; Lee R. Sellars strikes just the right note of alienation as Ira, the Jewish photographer with a fixation on Christian girls (he translates “shiksa” as “forbidden fruit”); as Barry, the gay producer who specializes in family entertainment, Ted Bales captures the high-strung brilliance, ironic superiority, and underlying vulnerability of an outsider forever trying to fit into society by manipulating the images it watches.
