Julie Jordan Scott directs the Five Dresses of Queen Kong - By N.L. Belardes
Leaving the Bakersfield Community theatre I started thinking about the chick flick style play I had just seen, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, directed by Julie Jordan Scott at Bakersfield Community Theatre. In my stereotypical male-oriented brain, my thoughts wandered to a recent argument I had with Matildakay when I felt a sudden rush of happiness knowing she had given in to the notion that King Kong was indeed a chick flick. Oh yes, I had told her before I watched the ape king with chingpea that it was just monkey love after all. She didn’t believe me. “It’s an action movie,” she said. “It’s Peter Jackson. There are monsters, blah blah blah blah…”
Director Julie Jordan Scott
No, it’s beastly love that mankind has for one another in a jungle of dreadful affairs, both natural and man-made…
That, I had insisted upon.
She relented. But only after she got all teary-eyed over King Kong getting all teary-eyed himself over the finger puppet damsel he’d been playing with like a ragdoll; all while trapsing through his neighborhood of old loves. And oh yes, his past was so ripe with love disasters that we saw into his prehistoric closet as he combated the seedy past in the very fabric of the jungle love all around him; once again, all while pulling the strings of his rosy-cheeked puppet; that is, until those old flames literally tried to rip his arms off and steal his near-broken puppetress.
But would Matildakay buy in to my next argument, one that places me more in the realm of an Enrique-style dysfunctional theatre review? After all, I was the voice of now defunct Queen of the Downtown Fur (I don’t need Enrique to make fun of stories of toilet bowl cleaning fiddlers from the Ozarks. I can do that myself).
I started talking about the big ape while heading down a darkened Chester Avenue. “Do we know if King Kong is really male other than the fact that he has the word ‘King’ in his name?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, King Kong could be female, right? I never saw any bananas hanging from those hairy trees. And Naomi Watts, her character could have been bisexual.” And girls want to be king too, right? Or queen. Hey, I saw Working Girl.
“Why are you suddenly talking about King Kong? We just saw a play that has nothing to do with that movie. King Kong was male. It was a love story.”
Oh was she?
Yes, a love story, But au contraire! Matildakay forgot she was talking to me, an over-analytical novelist who when sitting at the play made a ‘bet over nothing’ with her about which character would show herself in the obligatory boob-flashing chick flick play scene. “Meredith,” I said just after the play began. “She is the central figure.” It was subtle, but that was my guess.
Jen Barber plays Tricia
“Frances,” Matildakay suggested. “Or Georgeanne.”
When it got time for the revealing moment, the zealous character of Frances stood in a bathrobe. “It’s going to be her,” Matildakay said. But then she noticed Georgeanne’s dress was undone. “Or…”
Some of the cast from Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Nice choice for Frances. She needed to grow from her bible-thumping dialogue. But then her character would not because she wasn’t the transforming character of the story. She was the type of character who made excuses, who really had inward contrary thoughts which hid behind a veil of religious theory that in the end got caked with make-up and glossed over by a silent bout with a stairstepper: she wanted to look good for some monkey man. Still, the play was about Meredith. She had a secret she was hiding. She wasn’t being as revealing as the other characters, and moreso than the other characters, she had the ability to truly lash out in the jungle of dysfunctional and tangled life of splattered love that seemed all too real at times to this dysfunctional theatre-goer. Hell, the play was about girls all hiding out from a wedding, nervously smoking cigarettes and dope, and all crying about their current and past relationships while lashing out at men before each calmly realizing that the love of men was what they were really after: monkey love. More cowbell, more monkey love, more…
And then Meredith flashed her tits.
Meredith is played by Jennifer Sorkin
(there are two casts for this play)
That’s Queen Kong flashing and lashing: constantly crying about love (without words of course) on skull-fucked island that she crushes with big hairy feet and arms, bashing and splatting all in a jungle of life that has way too many bugs to step on, that is, until calmly realizing she just wanted acceptance from fellow man through the cutesy-pie conduit of a Barbie finger puppet. Kind of like one of those cutesy Bennetton sweater commercials: just love our pastel turtlenecks and all will be OK. After all, didn’t she just love that hairy sweater the monkey wore? Oh, but Queen Kong was more: a movie about bisexual love with a hairy monkey female really more in love with itself, and being Queen of the jungle of love and getting acceptance as that hairy Queen, and in the meantime lashing out at the very jungle itself, squishing violent male reptilian symbols at every chance in a sort of blame game for the violent life of tangled love where life throws you ugly sacrifices, where monkey love could be Queen (Makes you wonder if Queen Kong picking up the ugly native damsels was like getting drunk before going to the bar to pick up one of those dumb jock types for a night of monkey in-the-sack hedonism). Probably took Queen Kong running halfway across the island with the rag doll Watts-Barbie before sobering up and realizing, “I can’t just eat her. She’s good lookin’ and accepts me for not having a cock on the big screen.”
Frances is played delightfully by Maryallysan Blake
Oh come on. All five women had the common bond of matrimony linked by the feminine symbol of dresses they wore. Might as well all have worn monkey suits, because through the play they learned to have a strong love for each other, almost on the verge of lesbian love at one subtle moment. Yes, there was a token lesbian in the play, but monkey love was all around like glitter and whiskey.
And don’t tell me King Kong was male. There was a lot of cock envy from that bad chimp. Strip away the hair and angry chest-pounding and you will find an over-sized scarred-up unisex Ken doll with a smooth crotch, kind of like the old 1970s G.I. Joes I played with on rocky Santa Claran hillsides: tough-looking, but still Ken dolls with grimaces. And don’t tell me women can’t behave like King Kong. There’s always that tough girl lesbian ‘malecentric’ masculine one in the gay relationship who can beat her chest and beat some ass in monkey-stomping fashion, lash out at others, break the chains of love and crush men like a giant monkey squishing taxi cabs in New York. And in a male bashing play you don’t need the token lesbian to start the fisticuffs.
But just where was that monkey wronged on that skull-fucked island that he became so bitter? Or she? Was Queen Kong just angry at the male symbol of mankind, and all accepting of the acting of a pretty woman because of a bad relationship from a prehistoric monkey past?
Just what, you ask, was Meredith angry over? Oh you'll find out...
King Kong meets Queen Kong?
Now you’re probably wondering if I liked Five Women Wearing the Same Dress. I did. I found it hard to digest at times from my male perspective. But then in Queen Kong I found the monkey’s chest-pounding overdone as well. I enjoy the in-your-face dialogue between women and the men/love they crave better than women all sitting around male bashing. So when the male bashing got thick, I squirmed and said, “Ay!” The audience? They just laughed. It was funny after all. Unless you actually felt the blade go deep where the nerve endings are non-existent.
The comedic aspect was fun and subtle; while the story was well directed in showing the isolated nature of depressed and tragically repressed even within the same room. The acting was certainly engaging and performed with a sense of comfort between the actresses. It was if all the actresses really sat around and smoked out, telling true tales of their own lost love, and doing some good old fashioned male bashing while practicing at some actresses apartment late at night adorned with romantic photos of kissing beneath the Eiffel Tower and on dark streets.
Let me say this: right away I knew I was going to enjoy the play. On one level it was a story about doomed wedding and poor fashion taste in peach/pastel/green nasty colors. I think that was my own doomed wedding colors back in the late 1980s. If not, then should have been. And then of course there was actress Jen Barber who played one of the secondary characters (I forget the name). She talked a lot to the lesbian, Mindy. The parallel to my own life with Jen Barber, an attitude-filled *%#*^$ named Mindy and a doomed marriage was hilarious! Sorry, you’ll have to ask Jen about that one. She can air my dirty laundry all she wants…
Click here for details on when you can see Five Women Wearing the Same Dress or Queen Kong…
Director Julie Jordan Scott
No, it’s beastly love that mankind has for one another in a jungle of dreadful affairs, both natural and man-made…
That, I had insisted upon.
She relented. But only after she got all teary-eyed over King Kong getting all teary-eyed himself over the finger puppet damsel he’d been playing with like a ragdoll; all while trapsing through his neighborhood of old loves. And oh yes, his past was so ripe with love disasters that we saw into his prehistoric closet as he combated the seedy past in the very fabric of the jungle love all around him; once again, all while pulling the strings of his rosy-cheeked puppet; that is, until those old flames literally tried to rip his arms off and steal his near-broken puppetress.
But would Matildakay buy in to my next argument, one that places me more in the realm of an Enrique-style dysfunctional theatre review? After all, I was the voice of now defunct Queen of the Downtown Fur (I don’t need Enrique to make fun of stories of toilet bowl cleaning fiddlers from the Ozarks. I can do that myself).
I started talking about the big ape while heading down a darkened Chester Avenue. “Do we know if King Kong is really male other than the fact that he has the word ‘King’ in his name?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, King Kong could be female, right? I never saw any bananas hanging from those hairy trees. And Naomi Watts, her character could have been bisexual.” And girls want to be king too, right? Or queen. Hey, I saw Working Girl.
“Why are you suddenly talking about King Kong? We just saw a play that has nothing to do with that movie. King Kong was male. It was a love story.”
Oh was she?
Yes, a love story, But au contraire! Matildakay forgot she was talking to me, an over-analytical novelist who when sitting at the play made a ‘bet over nothing’ with her about which character would show herself in the obligatory boob-flashing chick flick play scene. “Meredith,” I said just after the play began. “She is the central figure.” It was subtle, but that was my guess.
Jen Barber plays Tricia
“Frances,” Matildakay suggested. “Or Georgeanne.”
When it got time for the revealing moment, the zealous character of Frances stood in a bathrobe. “It’s going to be her,” Matildakay said. But then she noticed Georgeanne’s dress was undone. “Or…”
Some of the cast from Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Nice choice for Frances. She needed to grow from her bible-thumping dialogue. But then her character would not because she wasn’t the transforming character of the story. She was the type of character who made excuses, who really had inward contrary thoughts which hid behind a veil of religious theory that in the end got caked with make-up and glossed over by a silent bout with a stairstepper: she wanted to look good for some monkey man. Still, the play was about Meredith. She had a secret she was hiding. She wasn’t being as revealing as the other characters, and moreso than the other characters, she had the ability to truly lash out in the jungle of dysfunctional and tangled life of splattered love that seemed all too real at times to this dysfunctional theatre-goer. Hell, the play was about girls all hiding out from a wedding, nervously smoking cigarettes and dope, and all crying about their current and past relationships while lashing out at men before each calmly realizing that the love of men was what they were really after: monkey love. More cowbell, more monkey love, more…
And then Meredith flashed her tits.
Meredith is played by Jennifer Sorkin
(there are two casts for this play)
That’s Queen Kong flashing and lashing: constantly crying about love (without words of course) on skull-fucked island that she crushes with big hairy feet and arms, bashing and splatting all in a jungle of life that has way too many bugs to step on, that is, until calmly realizing she just wanted acceptance from fellow man through the cutesy-pie conduit of a Barbie finger puppet. Kind of like one of those cutesy Bennetton sweater commercials: just love our pastel turtlenecks and all will be OK. After all, didn’t she just love that hairy sweater the monkey wore? Oh, but Queen Kong was more: a movie about bisexual love with a hairy monkey female really more in love with itself, and being Queen of the jungle of love and getting acceptance as that hairy Queen, and in the meantime lashing out at the very jungle itself, squishing violent male reptilian symbols at every chance in a sort of blame game for the violent life of tangled love where life throws you ugly sacrifices, where monkey love could be Queen (Makes you wonder if Queen Kong picking up the ugly native damsels was like getting drunk before going to the bar to pick up one of those dumb jock types for a night of monkey in-the-sack hedonism). Probably took Queen Kong running halfway across the island with the rag doll Watts-Barbie before sobering up and realizing, “I can’t just eat her. She’s good lookin’ and accepts me for not having a cock on the big screen.”
Frances is played delightfully by Maryallysan Blake
Oh come on. All five women had the common bond of matrimony linked by the feminine symbol of dresses they wore. Might as well all have worn monkey suits, because through the play they learned to have a strong love for each other, almost on the verge of lesbian love at one subtle moment. Yes, there was a token lesbian in the play, but monkey love was all around like glitter and whiskey.
And don’t tell me King Kong was male. There was a lot of cock envy from that bad chimp. Strip away the hair and angry chest-pounding and you will find an over-sized scarred-up unisex Ken doll with a smooth crotch, kind of like the old 1970s G.I. Joes I played with on rocky Santa Claran hillsides: tough-looking, but still Ken dolls with grimaces. And don’t tell me women can’t behave like King Kong. There’s always that tough girl lesbian ‘malecentric’ masculine one in the gay relationship who can beat her chest and beat some ass in monkey-stomping fashion, lash out at others, break the chains of love and crush men like a giant monkey squishing taxi cabs in New York. And in a male bashing play you don’t need the token lesbian to start the fisticuffs.
But just where was that monkey wronged on that skull-fucked island that he became so bitter? Or she? Was Queen Kong just angry at the male symbol of mankind, and all accepting of the acting of a pretty woman because of a bad relationship from a prehistoric monkey past?
Just what, you ask, was Meredith angry over? Oh you'll find out...
King Kong meets Queen Kong?
Now you’re probably wondering if I liked Five Women Wearing the Same Dress. I did. I found it hard to digest at times from my male perspective. But then in Queen Kong I found the monkey’s chest-pounding overdone as well. I enjoy the in-your-face dialogue between women and the men/love they crave better than women all sitting around male bashing. So when the male bashing got thick, I squirmed and said, “Ay!” The audience? They just laughed. It was funny after all. Unless you actually felt the blade go deep where the nerve endings are non-existent.
The comedic aspect was fun and subtle; while the story was well directed in showing the isolated nature of depressed and tragically repressed even within the same room. The acting was certainly engaging and performed with a sense of comfort between the actresses. It was if all the actresses really sat around and smoked out, telling true tales of their own lost love, and doing some good old fashioned male bashing while practicing at some actresses apartment late at night adorned with romantic photos of kissing beneath the Eiffel Tower and on dark streets.
Let me say this: right away I knew I was going to enjoy the play. On one level it was a story about doomed wedding and poor fashion taste in peach/pastel/green nasty colors. I think that was my own doomed wedding colors back in the late 1980s. If not, then should have been. And then of course there was actress Jen Barber who played one of the secondary characters (I forget the name). She talked a lot to the lesbian, Mindy. The parallel to my own life with Jen Barber, an attitude-filled *%#*^$ named Mindy and a doomed marriage was hilarious! Sorry, you’ll have to ask Jen about that one. She can air my dirty laundry all she wants…
Click here for details on when you can see Five Women Wearing the Same Dress or Queen Kong…
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Thursday, January 26, 2006.
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Queen Kong meet Mr. Belardes the creative writer...
When I said: "You can't relate this play to King Kong." You said: "Yes, I can, I'm a creative writer." Guess you proved me wrong in the best way I like to be proved wrong! :)
Excellent review of the play and deconstruction of King Kong in relation to 5 women all with their own issues with men but who still crave to be loved.
Where women with men issues gather there inevitably will be a little male-bashing. But this play does it great. It's multi-layered and witty-- I loved every minute of it. Especially when the men in the audience squirmed in discomfort because something had struck a cord in their lives.
Too bad you didn't see the other cast. I actually saw both. While the cast you saw is pretty good, the other cast, donning peach bridesmaids dresses, is stronger. I found all of the characters to be more realistic, thus more believable.
Both casts were good, but the other cast is just stronger.
Great review!
I'm not sure I could have handled the peach Queen Kongs. The green was tough enough and actually, with Barber being in the crowd, lent for a more of a sweet personalized touch as I could reminisce of my own peach flavored doomed wedding past, without seeing the peach of course...
Just "monkey love"? What else is there? See no evil Hear no evil Speak no evil! Monkey love is the best! After all they are so flexible, and that's without two hours of yoga. Not to mention they are so devoted! What more can a hot sexy woman ask for? I demand "monkey love"!
:)
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