LAUGH, RED MEDUSA! LAUGH, LAUGH . . . A PERIOD PIECE
Laugh is a study in wrenching, often hilarious polarities: it’s structured to contrast and finally bring together two intensely opposite sexual worlds. The first is a self-sustaining collective (they call themselves a “space”) of four women; although living in different places, they’re linked by the letters they send each other, each written in red ink (three are displayed in the lobby). Dahlia, Beth, Jane, and Christine, believers in the power of ancient Demeter, make up a “silent sisterhood” bonded by the color red, the symbol of menstruation. They believe, as Beth says, that “the female perspective is disallowed”–by the sexist bias built into language and by the phallocentric dominion imposed by half the species. But they hope to create “a space out of our words,” a new language that will become the basis for a feminist utopia. That could mean taking the “men” out of menstruation; certainly it requires purging the period of its age-old character as a curse. (Not your usual topic for theater.)
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But not to worry; despite Oobleck’s daunting and sometimes incoherent material, the audience does laugh in Laugh. The raunchy Romanian skits are an inspired and literal running joke. (But since we quickly get the point, there are four too many.)
You have to hand it to Theater Oobleck and its unguided missiles. They take touchy topics you’d swear were mutually destructive and turn them into compelling theater. This play gives the war between the sexes a whole new weaponry. And what other group would interrupt its show to announce an upcoming prochoice rally?
