SOMALIA, ETCETERA
The setting of Somalia, Etcetera wanders about in space and time with less of a purpose than the vague idea of filling the stage for three hours. Yet time and again the focus returns to the “Radical Feminists’ Caucus of Somalia,” where Spike, Malodorous, and Worm (played by Barbara Thorne, Lisa Black, and Sarah Brown) plot to free Somali women from the shackles of, well, you know, those shackles that women have to wear. Spike is the long-winded theorist, Worm the woman of action, and Malodorous the ditzy heterosexual. The major efforts of this caucus are rhetorical. They talk about Marxism and how it doesn’t meet feminist demands, and capitalism, and more of the same, and the Sunni Moslem religion, and more of the same. Every now and then the rhetoric is punctuated by a gunshot, as Malodorous blows off another finger, punishing herself for some imagined crime against “scientific socialism.”
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Oobleck prides itself on working without a director, and this too, no doubt, has something to do with anarchy. They surely can’t be faulted for this practice since, as any actor could tell you, no director is better than nine out of ten directors in the business. But in this case it’s a moot point. What Somalia, Etcetera really needs is an editor. David Isaacson’s script, written with the company, is bloated and redundant. Half the scenes are either dreadfully inert or easily expendable. What do the South Korean scenes, however funny they may be, have to do with Somalia? For that matter, what does this whole play have to do with Somalia? How many times is it necessary to cover the same ground about how incompatible religious and political systems are with the feminist movement? The problem here isn’t production, but conception. And, at the conceptual level, Oobleck’s anarchy translates as myopia and sloppiness.
