REVIEWS ...
Monday, May 8, 2006
Lots of laughter, abuse, too
A dictatorial teacher still has lessons to impart to students who had better sit up straight and listen -- or else.
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
A theatrically savvy friend used to tell me that his favorite play ever was Roberto Athayde's Miss Margarida's Way starring Estelle Parsons. He had gone to see it again and again, reveling in its raunchy humor, its allegorical message, its unsettling resonance for anyone who ever suffered under an especially dictatorial teacher.
Besides, I think he liked the abuse.
The world has changed since Athayde's play was banned in his native Brazil in 1973 and since Parsons played the formidable eighth grade biology teacher on Broadway in 1977 and again in 1990. Even so, look around you: Bullies and tyrants continue to do their worst. And Miss Margarida could still teach them a thing or two about turning spirited people into obedient sheep. Just ask her.
In Miss Margarida's Way, which has just opened at GableStage with Angie Radosh as the emotionally erratic teacher, you actually can ask questions. Its just that, after seeing what happens to anyone crazy enough to rise to Miss Margarida's bait, you might have second thoughts.
Her demand for absolute obedience aside, Miss Margarida is (just guessing here) quite unlike most teachers you'd find drilling their students for the FCAT. Though it's the first day of school, she already has names for us (the conceit is that we, the audience, are her students) -- "imbeciles," "morons" and "queers" are just a few. She has no problem telling one and all to go to hell, or worse. And though she looks straight-laced enough and seems to have a prude's view of sex, once she gets going, she's really quite the shameless minx.
Athayde's piece is a challenging monologue with largely unpredictable moments of interactive theater.
A "kid" slouching against one wall is actually an actor who stirs Miss Margarida's wrath and gets her back by mocking her, sticking her hat on the classroom skeleton and slipping a condom onto the banana she has brought for lunch. The rest of the class, different at every performance, might sass or talk back, try eating while the teacher's talking, answer a ringing cell phone or indulge in other disruptive behavior -- all of which is a death wish, as far as Miss Margarida is concerned.
As she roams Tim Connelly's wonderfully authentic classroom set (which Claire Savitt has decked out with an expressive array of biology-related props, including "specimen" jars), Radosh must -- like a real teacher -- maintain control and keep the play moving forward.
Miss Margarida enters bearing a tote bag, but the lithe actress has her own bag of impressive tricks. She can go from deadpan sternness to faux warmth in a flash. She communicates both repression and sexual voraciousness. Radosh still needs to fine-tune her timing to whip-cracking intensity, but several weeks of verbally beating up on her "students" should accomplish that.
Though the script is in no way dated, director Joseph Adler and Radosh make it sound more contemporary with fleeting references to the FCAT, votes on class-size limits, the concept of no child left behind, the theory of intelligent design.
If your tolerance for vulgar language, puerile gags and interactive theater is low, Miss Margarida's Way is one lesson you should probably avoid. But most of the "students" don't seem to care that laughing as much as they do could get them sent to the gulag that is the principal's office -- never to return.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The classroom stands in for the world in GableStage's satire on political tyranny
By Jack Zink, Theater Writer
Once, teachers like Miss Margarida were the scourges of our youth -- tyrants who demanded and got total obedience (at least while they were in the room) under the threats of punishments too horrible for grade school kids to envision.
For those who remember, and others who want to know, the GableStage exhumes the scathing comedy Miss Margarida's Way as a cautionary lesson regarding new generations of dictators. The sway of authoritarianism was ended by political correctness and much else in America's schools, where teachers are often the bullied ones these days. But they likely continue in some other parts of the globe -- Brazil, perhaps, where Athayde wrote his satire in the mid-1970s, and where it was banned.
Miss Margarida's Way found its way to the United States in 1977, eventually causing a sensation on Broadway. The not-so-divine Miss M and her eighth grade class (represented by the audience) are the playwright's allegorical stand-ins for totalitarian dictators and their subjugated peoples of any era and place.
Athayde's one-woman play remains a frequently unsettling tyrannical rant nearly 30 years after its premiere, although much of its shock value has eroded along with discipline in modern classrooms.
It's right up director Joseph Adler's alley, who revives the show at the GableStage in a spirited attempt to re-examine its relevance. This perverse, self-centered bully spews disinformation to her audience/class in the form of actress Angie Radosh, who manipulates her face between a sneer and a snarl.
Miss Margarida is new to biology class and spends her first day on the offensive, establishing control and outlining her own peculiar educational code. It becomes fascinating just to watch Radosh stalk Tim Connelly's wide, realistic classroom, filled with cutaway human and animal models, a skeleton, pickled specimens and what-have-you.
The monologue is confrontational and often profane, with anatomical, scatological and sexual references all jockeying for shock value. Although she has all the lines, Radosh is joined on several occasions by an uncredited young man posing as a student for sight gags. Radosh delivers what Adler positions as the crowning performance of her recent career, breaking out of featured character roles into ... a leading character role.
Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.
