20th Century Blues Sparkles with 21st Century humor

By JOANNA BRADY

When I was a young advertising copywriter, the target group in our creative strategies for consumer products was ‘Women, 18-49.’ “What happens when they turn fifty?” I’d ask the suits. “Do women stop brushing their teeth, feeding the dog, eating cereal or doing laundry?” They had no answer for that. Off their marketing charts, women became invisible after 49.

I thought of that when I saw Susan Miller’s 20th Century Blues, now playing at the Red Barn Theater. The character Gabby walked across town and nobody looked at her. “It’s like I was invisible,” she says.

20th Century Blues, directed with crystalline precision by Joy Hawkins, explores the lives of four women, Danny, (Annie Miners) Sil (Marjorie Paul-Shook), Mac (Deborah Jacobson) and Gabby (Peggy Montgomery), who met in lockup in the ‘70s. We never really know what they were protesting. Vietnam? Civil rights? Women’s Lib? Take your pick. In the ‘70s, getting tossed in the brig was almost a badge of honor. Danny, a photographer, took a photo of the women then, befriended them, and for the next four decades asked them to gather each year for a reprise.

Now boomers in their sixties, time is catching up to these once rambunctious ladies ready to go to jail for supporting a cause. This time, their crime is they’ve gotten old, and as Bette Davis once famously intoned, “Old age is not for sissies.” Over the years, there have been lovers, divorce, widowhood, kids, illness, menopause, affairs, a lesbian outing, and a facelift. Bra burning has been replaced by breast cancer. Danny’s mother, suffering from dementia (nicely played by Kathy Russ with lovable confusion) points the way to their future, which is bleak. Justin Ahearn, who convincingly plays Danny’s adopted son, heralds the present, a bright new day, when technology can be put to work.

In this, their 40th photo op reunion, Danny has told Sil, Gabby and Mac that MOMA is doing a retrospective of her work, and she wants to submit their photos from the past: A photographic passage of time. To do this, she needs a waiver from each of them. At this, the friendly thread that holds them together quickly begins to fray.

The women are suddenly self-conscious about being on public display in their advanced years. They prefer to have their memories, along with how they look now, buried deep in the camera, like organisms trapped in amber. Who wants themselves on view, with all their wrinkles, hanging in a museum?

Stellar performances are turned in by the ever comedic and entertaining talent, Marjorie Paul-Shook, who plays Sil, a successful realtor, Deborah Jacobson is excellent as Mac, the African American lesbian, a newspaper editor. Peggy Montgomery is a convincing veterinarian. Annie Miners’s, role as Danny is a demanding one, as she sets the table for the audience at the beginning before the women arrive, and wields the baton right to the surprising end with aplomb and grace.

This is a comedy about getting old, but there is much more to it.  Unfunny as that subject is, the play defies categorization, touching on many subjects of interest to both women and men, and elicits a lot of laughs from the audience.

Susan Miller, herself a septuagenarian, has nailed this one, with dialogue that’s sharp and authentic; and at times, very funny.  It may be a play about women, but it’s also a play about relationships, and without referencing today’s political situation, about why the present day women’s movement is catching fire.

See it. It’s a play that touches the heart in all of us.

For ticket information and availability, visit http://www.redbarntheatre.com/tickets. Or call the box office at 305-296-9911. the Red Barn is located at 319 Duval St. (rear).

Joanna Brady is a Key West writer, author of the historical novel about Key West, The Woman at the Light, published by St. Martin’s Press.

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