Theater Review: ‘Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show’ is Fresh and Funny

By Theresa Burns | March 11, 2010

I never saw the first edition of “Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show” when it became a big off-Broadway hit some 20 years ago; I spent my weekends back then buying suits and having my power pumps re-heeled. So I don’t really know what’s been updated in this version of the script, which was revised by the now-famous writing and performing duo Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy in 2006. All I know is that the way Dreamcatcher Repertory presents the material at The Baird this month keeps things thoughtful, funny and fresh for most of its 90 minutes. I didn’t detect a single asking-for-directions joke all night.

Dreamcatcher’s version stars four women, all of whom display considerable talent and energy.

Originally written as a two-woman play—or series of sketches, really—skewering men, women and the people who make them, Dreamcatcher’s version stars four women, all of whom display considerable talent and energy: Laura Ekstrand (who is also Dreamcatcher’s Artistic Director), Noreen Farley, Jessica O’Hara-Baker and Harriett Trangucci. Their performances in the 10 sketches here call to mind the old “Saturday Night Live” skits that featured Gilda Radner, Lily Tomlin and Jane Curtin playing characters that elicited laughs and camaraderie, rather than pity. Only this time there are some serious bits.

The action begins, appropriately enough, in a sort of neo-Genesis scene with Farley and O’Hara-Baker playing two “Spiritual Beings” doling out the jobs, and races, of the humans below. Since they’re first alphabetically, it’s decided that the females shall bear the children through “a small portal”; the men shall be compensated with enormous egos and the “wonderfulness of being really good at math.” Like all middle managers, they have a tough boss who’s the target of a lot of eye rolling: “Cliff,” the guy who gets to say how everyone is supposed to act.

A number of skits have religion as a theme. In one, two preadolescent girls compare notes on Catholic Church dogma (“Every time you lie, you put another thorn in Jesus’ head.”) One swears she will be a saint, the other a priest. (Chuckles of irony; no revising needed there.) Later, we overhear a grown woman make her first confession in 14 years. It’s a long and familiar list of sins she recounts, filled with promises motivated by her need to please, please not be pregnant.

Jessica O'Hara-Baker & Noreen Farley

Some pieces have a more somber undertone, in spite of the laughs. In “Beverly Hills/Face,” Noreen Farley plays a 60-something spa patron having a pedicure done while recuperating from a salt scrub. She resents the overheard comment that she and her ilk are “divorced, rich Beverly Hills ladies,” and proceeds to unpack that complicated truth in hilarious and heart-rending detail. (There is something inexplicably funny about her yelling at the pedicurist periodically to “rinse the tool in the blue water!”) With her towel atop her head and her expressive face free to do its thing, I found it hard to take my eyes off her.

A few minutes later, Farley is playing a hard drinking, leering barfly somewhere out West who tries tiresomely to pick up a pretty, young regular, Laura Ekstrand. (There is no makeup or dramatic costume change here, other than a droopy, wide-brimmed hat. The transformation is done through acting.) He is all hot, sour air, of course, but their interaction is poignant all the same, since Ekstrand’s character tolerates his nonsense for an uncomfortably long time.

On a side note, this is the second time I’ve attended a Dreamcatcher production this season. In between, I attended a top-rated, Broadway blockbuster that cost four times as much and wasn’t half as entertaining. There were empty seats at The Baird the other night. Now that’s something that should be revised.

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