THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 20, 1994 TAG: 9412200076
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: BY MONTAGUE GAMMON III, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
THE EXCLAMATION point in the title of ``O'Keeffe!'' is emblematic of how this one-woman show about painter Georgia O'Keeffe was presented.
Shown last weekend at the Generic Theater, the show's content could have been amply interesting, but the performance was encrusted with mannerisms and weighed down with forced emphasis.
To draw a comparison with O'Keeffe's world, the style had the intellectual depth of Norman Rockwell and the technical subtlety of Jackson Pollack.
Not once, not twice, but no less than three times, the background music swelled from nowhere as a monologue reached for lyrical and emotional heights. Audiences interested in the life and art of Georgia O'Keeffe should be given credit for enough intelligence to notice such climaxes without having them accented like the romantic finale of a cheap melodrama.
When O'Keeffe finally moves from New York to New Mexico, she signals her newfound freedom by unfastening the top button of her old-fashioned, high-necked blouse.
Author and performer Lucinda McDermott threw her head back and raised her right hand so often one expected her to break into a flamenco dance. When she wasn't imitating the Statue of Liberty or striking some other pose, she was resorting to one of a half-dozen overused vocal mannerisms.
Her favorite was a Grand Pause, punctuated by a Significant Glance and ended with a sharp, one word cap. The audience became equally familiar with a Three Part Pause that would be extended by a silent shift of the eyes or the body, and then stretched again, until one felt like a caged animal being teased by a stick-wielding child.
One doesn't know if the painter's mentor, lover and husband Alfred Stieglitz talked like an intellectual W.C. Fields, but McDermott's rendition of O'Keeffe imitating him rapidly turned into self-parody.
One need not read McDermott's professional credentials to recognize her command of voice and movement. Equally clear were her concentration and her amply supply of disciplined energy. She just didn't have the help of an outside observer to warn her away from self-excavated pitfalls, nor did her writing have an editor to pare the redundancies from her script.
The play had the look, and the frailties, of a theatrical labor of love. Such ventures begin when someone, usually a performer, becomes committed to a Great Idea. Then allies are recruited to form a production team.
Problems arise when personal loyalties drown their ability to view a developing work objectively. Rehearsals don't toss out misguided impulses, or eliminate repeated images and ideas, but fine-tune fundamental mistakes without ever correcting them.
O'Keeffe must have been a fascinating woman. Her story carries lessons that are clearly meaningful to contemporary women. McDermott could use the same self-knowledge and ruthlessness with which O'Keeffe, determined to redefine her art, discarded stale paintings in the first scene of this play. ILLUSTRATION: THEATER REVIEW
WHAT: ``O'Keeffe!'' written and performed by Linda McDermott
WHEN: Dec. 16-18
WHERE: Generic Theater, 912 W. 21st St., Norfolk
by CNB