| It is being
offered here by SNAP Productions at the Jewish Community Center Theater, with M. Michele
Phillips and Roxanne Wach performing the 10 skits that comprise this perfect little
cabaret offering. Very funny
throughout are the impersonations of various New York characters, ranging from a pair of
elderly Jewish women to parochial grade-school girls, and a team of angels, too, looking
down at creation.
The humor is decidedly adult, with some sexual and
even gynecological jokes, but the obvious intent is harmless, as are the many little
arrows aimed at religious education. Most of this material is nostalgic and often
hilarious. And Miss Phillips makes an uncanny youngster.
Miss Phillips and Miss Wach are very relaxed and
confident as they run the gamut of ages and experiences. Miss Wach is especially winning
as a lovable old Jewish lady taking courses at a community college.
The authors have a good ear for dialogue, and the
interplay of the two actors is deliciously whimsical, with slang alternating with kid talk
or with matronly musings.
SNAP (Support Nebraska AIDS Project) productions
generally have a gay and lesbian orientation, but this show has an orientation that is
much broader.
Life itself is on the table (although a couple of
references are made to gay relatives or homosexual experience). The one frankly lesbian
skit is a side"splitting, good-natured sendup of lesbian theater (the "Las
Hermanas" club), with Miss Wach and Miss Phillips doing a pair of dizzy dishes who
hate men and worship a mother goddess.
The girls who appear frequently and eventually grow up
have not been saints. Raised Catholic, they have broken some important rules. But all of
this is lightly treated for the humor is not malicious, being self-satire more than
anything, Nor is any anti-Jewish message intended.
In the last skit, the women appear in a high window in
Bryan McAdams' simple but attractive set, as angels musing on what has passed.
Todd Brooks debuts here as director and keeps the pace
required for a series of skits. Urbane and sassy, "Parallel Lives" is a funny
show that is not meant to offend anyone and the two-person cast is engaging. |
