Articles / Arts Date: Feb 25, 2004 - 03:33 PM

By Anastasia Pantsios

THE PURSUITS and pastimes of women have usually been regarded as trivial, while those of men are assigned weight and importance. There's nothing more intrinsically noble in real-estate scams than in hairdressing.

Yet David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross , about a team of real-estate salesmen, though it has its comic aspects, has a hard core of seriousness and desperation. Transposing the pushy, profanity-laced speeches of those salesmen to a beauty salon and the world of hairdressing, as Minnesota comedian-writer Laurel Osterkamp has done in her parody, Gwen Hairy Gwen Gloss , exposes the pure silliness of Mamet's conceits. She's inserted entire chunks of Mamet's dialogue verbatim into the mouths of three hairstylists and their scheming viper of a salon manager, changing only the subject they're addressing. In doing so, she sets up a dialogue about the lives of men and women. Though her characters may seem at first more ridiculous, they're also more human and sympathetic than Mamet's.

Bad Epitaph Theater Company's current production of Gwen Hairy Gwen Gloss takes place in a hair salon, literally. It's being produced in the chic upstairs styling room of Zen Salon and Spa in Ohio City, with the audience seated in the corner by the windows, and much of the action taking place at the styling stations. It's a tactic also being used by Charenton Theater in its current production of the Mamet play, which it's touring to makeshift “office” spaces around the city. The simultaneous productions provide theatergoers with an opportunity to compare the two and observe the interesting crosscurrents they set up.

Glengarry 's old-school salesman, Shelly, becomes lost-in-the-'80s hairdresser Shelly, played by Alison Hernan. Hernan, who opens the play to a roar of laughter when she storms into the salon sporting a lavender coat, red leg warmers and one of those flouncy pastel sweatshirt dresses that were popular around 1985, is the heart of Gwen Hairy . Her Shelly is an extravagant caricature, but as Hernan plays her, she's also deeply affecting.

In fact, all three stylists are played with so much warmth and believability that you root for all to win the no-win contest set up by the “corporate office in Beachwood.” Renita Jablonski's Celine is earnest and befuddled, while Magdalyn Donnelly's sleek, black-clad Audrey is the trendy gal who's clearly more in touch than her colleagues with the contemporary clientele. Donnelly plays Audrey with laid-back charm as she bedazzles the young personal assistant to Denise Dufala with a glib, existentialist pitch (taken almost verbatim from Mamet's original play) to cadge her boss's private phone number. But Donnelly makes Audrey seem like a genuine people person, rather than someone who's just on the make.

The villains here are the conniving salon manager and “ECB,” or “Executive Corporate Bitch,” who swoops in from to browbeat the stylists. The character is so over-the-top — she attempts to humiliate Seline by reminding her that while Seline drives a '68 Pinto, ECB arrived in a $125,000 Hummer — that it's hard to comment on Kellie McIvor's performance, which couldn't be anything but one-dimensional. However, McIvor does double duty as Dufala's mousy personal assistant, playing the two very different characters so convincingly you'll check your program twice before believing it's the same actress. Only Dana Textoris's Vicki lacks real impact, partly because the character is written without nuance, but also because Textoris seems too young to play this manipulative character.

The plot, taken directly from Glengarry , involves the pressure on the hairdressers to get “referrals,” the “leads” of Glengarry . The one who gets the most referrals gets to use the titular hair products that are off-limits to the others. The salon is robbed; the products are stolen. Who did it? In attempting to tailor the original play's plot to a new situation, Osterkamp has created a plot hole (concerning a Flock of Seagulls roadie whose referrals Shelly believes will jump-start her career) so big you could drive a fleet of Hummers through it. By that point, though, you'll be too caught up in rooting for these sympathetic characters to care.

This production is short, just under an hour, and vigorously paced. Director Nick Koesters has used his ready-made set effectively, and the costumes, designed by Hernan, vividly clarify the characters' personalities.

This article comes from The Cleveland Free Times http://www.freetimes.com/

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