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Round-Table Talk:               

”Looking For Guenevere”                                                     The Washington Post   (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Washington, D.C.

Author:

Cooper, Jeanne

Date:

Mar 24, 1994

Start Page:

c.07

Section:

STYLE

Text Word Count:

332

A meditative dialogue on the heroine of Arthurian legend, Rose Solari's "Looking for Guenevere" at D.C. Arts Center barely merits the appellation of "play." More appropriate - and trendier - would be "multimedia performance art." Which is not necessarily a bad thing. If you regard "Looking" more as a spoken-word performance with visual trimmings than as a one-act, the roles and the actresses in them will hold your interest for the duration of this hour-long piece.

From a dramatic viewpoint, the two characters - the passion-obsessed Rose (played by Solari) and the down-to-earth Kate (Johari M. Rashad) - are mere mouthpieces for Solari's musings on the femme fatale of "Le Mort d'Arthur." Solari's background as a poet is often obvious in her choice of delicate imagery. She's a bit of a comic too: After Kate relates a transcendent childhood experience ended by the familiar smell of frying eggs, Rose asks if she was disappointed by her return to reality. "I was happy to have my eggs," Kate shrugs.

Then there are times when Rose's conversation has the forced intensity of a Cosmopolitan headline: "How the Love of Two Men Will Make You Radiant," "Why Modern Women Should Watch Out for Mordred." Solari tends to play with her hair during such sultry discourse.

That's when you can admire the production's beautiful painted backdrops by Ingrid April  or focus on the conjurers J.L. Darrah and Juan Paredes. Two inventive movement artists, they shadow the actresses, miming furniture and emotional states (although on occasion they do make the small stage seem cluttered.)

Solari's script comes to its conclusion as methodically as an essay. But despite the lack of narrative drive, the message - that Guenevere's transformation into an abbess after her life of passion was a positive choice - is convincingly delivered and surprisingly uplifting.

Looking for Guenevere, by Rose Solari. Directed by Sarah Pleydell. Set, Ingrid April, music, Tom White and Jim Williamson; lighting, Jeff McCasland. Through April 2 at D.C. Arts Center. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. https://www.artistpainter.biz/guenevere-set