Word: ada
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Something has happened in the world, and we sense that it is along the lines of an Orwellian Big Brother phenomenon (could it be the television monitor perched near the ceiling, fixed on the characters below?). Ada and Meg (Yvonne Roemer and Calysta Drake) are chief-and assistant-washroom attendants, who encounter a series of women seeking a warm place to eat breakfast, to relieve themselves, and to expound their views on why men are wonderful and warm, beastly or boring...
...groups of women enter separately and stay on until the climactic ending. Three post-teeny boppers, freed by "technology" to "love" their men wholeheartedly, clash with a pair of prudish widows. Ada, who tells us she performs sex for money, possesses a cynicism which clashes with the young women's naivete about finding true love in the world. And a suicidal woman, who decides to kill herself because of her boyfriend, provides contrast to Ada's active resolve to do away with men's control over women, and to the widows' passive acquiescence to their husbands' control...
Yvonne Roemer as Ada plays the role with powerful spite, and as the initiator of most of the action, prods the other characters into deeper levels of hatred. She is vehement. The three post-teeny boppers, played by Jessica Yager, Bess Wohl, and Rashida Jones, are bubbly and keep effervescing until the climax leaves them flat. The two widows, played by Rebecca A. Murray and Jenni Paredes, provide timely comic relief; their speech oscillates between keen observation of the way things used to be and transparent example-setting for why they must change...
...these women, of differing ideologies and upbringings, pounce on what they think is a man in their bathroom, and devour this person like a pack of wild dogs. After the kill, the soft-spoken question that crystallizes the moment drifts up into the air above the murderers' heads: "Ada--what will you do? Your promotion..." The roar of a powerful incinerator answers that question...
Deathrap. By Ira Levin. Produced by Bill Selig and Ada Lin. Directed by Kaile Shilling. A thriller in two acts. Juicy murder in Act One, unexpected developments in Act Two. So begins Deathtrap, written by a burned out mystery playwright. Or one of his students. With help from the worried wife, lawyer, and psychic next door, the tension builds in this suspenseful, intricate murder romp. Loeb Experimental Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Free. November Friday...