Private Parts
I should have known this play was trouble from the start. The scene looked inviting enough when I walked into the Phoenix Theatre to see Pardon My Invasion. Fred Sharkey’s set is a nicely detailed living room or home study with a desk with a typewriter and a bottle of booze, with more reinforcements above the fireplace. But as soon as the play begins to the strains of the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” (appropriately licensed, I’m sure), we see that the woman sitting at the typewriter wears a fedora down over her eyes while she bangs out her manuscript. This is a very bad sign. She’s writing a lurid potboiler of a detective novel in a ludicrously overblown style that would put Mickey Spillane to shame (and Mickey Spillane has no shame).
Real Women Eat Quiche
When you arrive at the humble Phoenix Theater, tucked away on the sixth floor of a building around the corner from American Conservatory Theater and the Curran Theatre, you’re given a nametag. You’re attending a meeting of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and your tag indicates you’re just one of the ladies.
