Alan
Ball’s catty R-rated comedy Five
Women Wearing the Same Dress, which plays Aug.
9-12 and 15-19 in the Sara Lynn and K.D. Kennedy Theater in
the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in downtown
Raleigh, reminds me of the punch line of an old joke about
a really catty woman: “Saucer of milk. Table for one.” This
uproarious Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy presentation
follows a quintet of runaway bridesmaids who make token appearances
at the wedding reception, and then retreat to an upstairs bedroom
and bare their claws as they shamelessly dish about the supremely
self-centered bride whom, it seems, none of them really like
and about the hapless groom who has heedlessly flung himself
headlong into her tender trap. Poor boy. He’ll be wearing
her ring through his nose.
Middle Creek High School theater-arts teacher Athena
Marie Reaves of Apex is a pip as Meredith, a pot-smoking free spirit
who’s just dying to spoil her sister Tracy’s big day.
But the sarcastic sister of the bride hides a terrible secret under
her flippant exterior.
New York actresses Jennifer Laine Williams and Mary
Guiteras are hilarious as Tracy’s former friends Trisha and
Georgeanne. After a track record that not even Madonna could match,
Trisha has once again sworn off men; and Georgeanne is a desperate
housewife, trapped in a boring marriage, who foolishly hopes to
have a sexual liaison with an old flame sometime during the wedding
festivities.
Raleigh actress Kerry Ann Lambert gives a gritty
performance as the groom’s outspoken lesbian sister Mindy,
who knows she’s a scandal and revels in that fact; and University
of North Carolina at Greensboro sophomore Emily Labelle is amusing
as Frances, an outspoken fundamentalist and a prissy pillar of
rectitude who is about to have her horizons widened … at
long last … by a handsome bald bartender who has introduced
the teetotaling Frances to the intoxication of expensive champagne.
Movie-star handsome Raleigh native Ira David Wood
IV, who now calls Los Angeles home, adds a charming comic cameo
as Griffin Lyle “Tripp” Davenport III, who falls hard
for Trisha but finds himself inexplicably put off his game when
she responds eagerly to his most sordid suggestions about how they
can spend the evening.
HSN director Kristen Coury has done a fine job of
orchestrating this gabfest, so that the zingers tossed off by the
titular characters almost always hit their mark. Set and lighting
designer Curtis Lee Jones superbly recreates Meredith’s cozy
bedroom with its Malcolm X poster prominently displayed to clash
with the otherwise traditional décor and, mostly, to raise
her mother’s blood pressure. Costume designer Casey Watkins
has created some hideous bridesmaids’ dresses that add to
the comedy, and sound designer Brian L. Hunt provides a soundscape
that complements the action.
Hot Summer Nights’ frisky and very, very funny
production of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress may just
be the pick-me-up needed to made Triangle theatergoers forget the
record heat wave — and all those appalling air-conditioning
bills that will soon decimate their budgets. For broadminded audiences,
Alan Ball’s 1993 Off-Broadway hit may well be a nice antidote
to an otherwise depressing summer of national disasters and endless
bickering among both parties’ disappointing roster of
presidential candidates. Don’t forget to wear your ugly bridesmaid
dress and shave $7.50 off the ticket price.
Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy presents Five
Women Wearing the Same Dress Wednesday-Saturday
Aug. 8-11 and 15-18, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 12 and 19, at
3 p.m. in the Sara Lynn and K.D. Kennedy Theater in the Progress
Energy Center for the Performing Arts, 1 E. South St., Raleigh,
North Carolina. $27.50, except $20 Sunday matinees and
senior group rates. Progress Energy Center Box Office: 919/831-6060.Group
Rates: 919/828-3726. Note 1: There
will be FREE complimentary beverages and desserts at all intermissions.
Note 2: Anyone who shows
up at the Kennedy Box Office in an ugly bridesmaid dress will
get in to the show for only $20! Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy:
http://www.hotsummernightsatthekennedy.org/shows.html#5wwtsd
[inactive 2/10]. Alan Ball: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0050332/bio (Internet
Movie Database) and http://movies2.nytimes.com/person/271194/Alan-Ball/biography (The
New York Times).
