‘Parallel Lives’ is double the talent and fun
Two sets of actors bring roles written for two to life in production at The Baird

By Ruth Ross, Correspondent | March 18, 2010

When four actors assume the roles in a play originally written for two, something wonderful happens: you get double the talent, double the fun, double the drama. That’s what happens at Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre in South Orange, where Laura Ekstrand, Harriett Trangucci, Noreen Farley and Jessica O’Hara-Baker assume the various roles in 10 short skits that make up the New Jersey premiere of the updated edition of “Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show,” which runs through Sunday at the Baird Theatre.

Double your pleasure by going to see four multi-talented actors

Originally written and performed Off-Broadway in 1991 by Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, “Parallel Lives” garnered both writer/performers Obie Awards for acting. Well, the Dreamcatcher Four deserve an equivalent honor awarded to New Jersey’s Actors Equity theaters.

They play off each other—mostly two at a time—so beautifully and seamlessly, switching personas in the blink of an eye—or the donning of a shirt or skirt or hat—that they instantly and convincingly become the characters they are portraying. First-time director David Miceli keeps things moving along at a clip that doesn’t sacrifice comedy and pathos for time.

The 10 sketches cover all aspects of women’s lives from birth to adolescence to midlife crisis to death—no, make that from the Earth’s creation. The play begins with two Supreme Beings making decisions about skin color, human beings’ ability to make decisions through free choice—no rules—the supremacy of the sexes and even pregnancy and birth. Sitting on a cloud, dressed in white and wreathed with laurel crowns, Jessica O’Hara-Baker and Noreen Farley set the tone of satirical criticism for the evening, one that they assess in a similar scene at the end of the play.

Skewering sexual stereotypes and identities, the skits cover children’s misconceptions about God and religion, teens’ attitudes toward love, sex and boyfriends, what would happen if men menstruated, plastic surgery as an antidote to aging, couples’ relationships and sibling rivalry. Trangucci and Ekstrand are spot on as two young sisters who try to make sense out of God and religion; their body English and vocal delivery are very convincing! Ditto Trangucci and Farley, who play Annette and Gina, two New York teenagers struggling about whether to give up their virginity to their loutish boyfriends and likening their situations to “West Side Story.”

Jessica O'Hara-Baker in The Kathy & Mo Show

Farley is hilarious as a “rich, divorced Beverly Hills lady” at a spa, talking to her friend and shouting at the woman giving her a pedicure, and later as Hank, a drunk who tries to pick up Ekstrand’s Karen Sue by telling her umpteen times that she looks “really, really pretty tonight.”

My favorite playlet is “Las Hermanas,” in which Ekstrand and Trangucci as Jewish matrons of a certain age, complete with hats, fur stoles and glasses, find themselves on a field trip with their Women’s Studies extension course classmates to a health food restaurant where they watch Holly and Molly perform a riotous piece of performance art about sisterhood. The two walk like older ladies, talk like older ladies, and their difficulty ordering food in this “chemical-free, meat-free, male-free” environment will have you rolling in the aisles!

“Parallel Lives” touches all the women in the audience, who will recognize themselves or someone they know in the actors onstage. But any man who has lived with wives, sisters, mothers or girlfriends, especially for a long while, will get a good laugh, too. So double your pleasure by going to see four multi-talented actors—it’s more politically correct than “actresses”—in a multiplicity of roles and situations. It’s great comic relief in these trying economic times!

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