Mustang Sally
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Biggins, Conte, Smiley, Blain-Rogazy, Conway
Photo by Arturo Castillo
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By Joseph N. Feinstein
Linda Felton Steinbaum tackles a problem of grave importance that is increasingly occurring in America: The epidemic numbers of school teachers - male and female - who are having love affairs and sex with their students. Unfortunately, she has created a play that is unbelievably bizarre. She did this as follows:
In the sixty-five minutes of the play, we have at least eight very distracting changes of wardrobe, most of which are created by Tina Rose to distinguish the weirdness of the characters: Mother Marilyn (Tish Smiley) looks as if she could either be a courtier or the clown in any Shakespearean production; the thirty-year-old teacher, Kathy (Sally Conway), goes in and out of her room, emerging each time dressed in outfits designed to depict her immaturity, naiveté, and her obliviousness to what is going on about her as she reiterates her undying love for the thirteen-year-old student with whom she has had relations. Her friend, the art teacher, Tony (Sean Vincent Biggins), is in jeans and overalls, bespattered in paint each time he appears. I have taught in high schools for thirty-two years, and never did I see an art teacher so poorly dressed. Controlling sister Elizabeth (Andrea Conte) and lawyer Edward (Michael Blain-Rozgay) are accorded calm and normalcy in their dress.
The action, the lines, the characters are about as melodramatic as you will ever see or hear in any play you have attended since 1957. Moreover, the side stories of Mother Marilyn's crazy investments in her gold mine in South Africa, her million-dollar magazine schemes to get rich, and the evolving love interest for sexy sister Elizabeth by divorced lawyer Edward only help to detract from the more immediate problems Kathy is facing in the possible suit by her young paramour's family for child abuse. That Kathy or the many other teachers who have committed this crime ever passed their teaching internships remains a mystery.
Director Arturo Castillo has a most reputable background in previous productions. Here, he appears to be out to lunch. His characters move about answering knocks at the door, never asking "who's there," opening the door wide with each knock. People go back and forth to the refrigerator or enter and leave with such rapidity as to be unrealistic and totally unbelievable. Kathy's solo scene at the end of the play will remind you of the scenes that were done so well in the twentie about a damsel in distress. What were you thinking, Mr. Castillo?
From the director's notes in the playbill: "We won't always come to a consensus, and some subjects will confound us with their complexity, but addressing these subjects is what is important. Hopefully this play will help to trigger a passionate, reasoned, and valuable debate concerning a topic we are increasingly seeing in the headlines." Hopefully, yes! This play, not!
Mustang Sally The Whitefire Theatre 13500 Ventura Blvd. Sherman Oaks 91423 Tel, 866-811-4111 Tickets $20 Play Friday & Saturday @ 8:00 p.m.; Sunday @ 2:30 p.m. Until November 18
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