And then there's the SUMMER SHORTS at the Abbott Memorial Theatre just off Waltham's town square, produced by The Hovey Players --- pound for pound, inch for inch, the best damn theatrical company in this area. (The fact that Hovey mainstay Mark Sickler has often stage-managed the Playwrights' Platform Festivals has a lot to do with the smooth professionalism of the work there.) The Hovey system is fluid: some playwrights act as their own directors, but Hovey sees to it that all plays get the best production possible under pressures of time. And the level of work has, I think, improved year by year. The number of plays submitted jumped about 100% since last year, the quality was damn high, and the playwrights have begun to see inclusion in this annual showcase as a major credit in which to take pride....
Michael Bettencourt is an intensely committed, unique theatrical craftsman whose work leans heavily on ritual and invocation of subtle mythology. He has gone to New York, where I hope he finds sensitive directors and developers who can give him the audience he deserves. I expect him back for the regional premieres of all his plays, which I hope to see soon.
This play -- which I feel was under-rehearsed by Director Kristin Hughes -- began puzzlingly with contests centered on naming euphemisms for or telling stories centered around women's breasts. Only later should it dawn on the audience that this circle is a support-group helping a member say goodbye to her mammaries before cancer surgery. It's purpose is didactic, its audience specific, but given work it could -- as can be said of most of Michael's serious plays -- raise consciousness and instill sympathy. I think the cast (Lily Allen, Moira McCarthy, Anne Secrest, Wendy Feign, Teresa Goding & Lisa Burdick) skated on the surface of lines that demanded a lot more work than they could get with such a short rehearsal schedule. At bottom, though, this is not a play for general audiences.
Simultaneously patronizing, dull, and so very, very earnest, this piece nevertheless is convinced of its own cleverness and relevance. Because it deals (obliquely) with a sensitive and important topic, people will say they like this play, because they feel they should. Don't be fooled. Throughout, one hears the voice of a playwright who really, really wants you to know that he's good. But there were no characters on stage, only poetry, and not very good poetry at that. The whole play is based on a fairly dumb conceit: that a group of women, friends of a woman who is about to undergo a mastectomy, will hold a ceremony where they will recount all the names by which we call breasts. I think this is the playwright's idea of something "women would do." I was left feeling as though that would be a pretty unfeeling thing to do, to celebrate the glory of an organ your friend is about to have cut out. I was utterly unconvinced by the idea. Also, can someone explain the final metaphor, comparing the removed tissue - or perhaps just an incision - to a butterfly?