"Lady
in Question" has all the answers: Pocket Sandwich camps it up thoroughly
By Lawson Taitte / Excerpted
from The Dallas Morning News 2/24/2002
The
Lady in Question,
which Pocket Sandwich Theatre opened on Friday, epitomizes the theater of
the ridiculous movement that flourished in Manhattan a couple of decades
ago. It's full of melodramatic exaggeration and campy humor...The plot calls
to mind all those old - and even a few recent - movies about escapes from
Nazi Europe. Gertrude Garnet (Andi Allen), an American concert pianist,
is staying in a small town with her buddy Kitty (Robin Young). She is reluctantly
drawn into a plot to save the actress mother (Alice Montgomery) of a visiting
American professor (Erik Knapp)...Ms. Allen speaks in a dandy Katharine
Hepburn voice when she's not lapsing into the cruder accent that reveals
her character's humble origins. Every facial expression recalls the glory
days of the silent movies. Ms. Young throws her body around and smiles toothily
as if doing a female impersonation; she's one of the best things in the
show. Mr. Knapp combines a Cary Grant nonchalance with a wholesome American
vigor. The bad guys are loads of fun, too - particularly Ginger Goldman
as a kind of Aryan Bad Seed, gleefully pulling on her pigtails and strangling
people. Goodness can be just as amusing, in the person of a heroic Bavarian
nurse (Elizabeth Van Winkle) who faces torture with deadpan bravado.
Busch's story holds together quite nicely. It plays by the 1940s rules so
faithfully that one can almost imagine a production by rather dim people
who don't realize it's supposed to be funny.
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