STAGE REVIEW : ‘BALLERINA’ TENDER TALE OF DANCER’S LIFE

Everyone has a story to tell. When a person is silenced by himself, or others, it is like a little death.

Eleanor Antin tells a story of just such a little death in “Who Cares About a Ballerina?” playing at the Bowery Theatre though March 22.

Antin plays the title character of Madame Eleanora Antinova, an aging ex-ballerina who is trying to write her memoirs with the dubious help of a succession of temporary typists, none of whom understands or cares about what she is trying to write.

Antinova is an expansive person, and Antin plays her with a revved-up motor. Her words tumble and flow, stop and start, circle around and forget themselves. It is as if her thoughts are as cluttered as her parlor, which overflows with the practical, the precious and the sentimental: an old Royal typewriter, an exercise bike, a brass samovar, a musical ballerina, and pink dancing slippers hanging from an upright lamp.

She talks of impresarios and dancers in a passionate rather than logical order. Against her tempestuous beat, the four typists, all played by Robyn Hunt in fresh and distinctively different styles, provide a comically pragmatic counterpoint.

As the first typist, Hunt is prim and proper. Her dream is to work for someone orderly and precise, “like a buyer from Duluth . . . or an investment counselor.” She is not at all happy when she tries to start at the beginning of Antinova’s story, only to be told, “Life never begins at the beginning.”

As the second, Hunt over-romanticizes Antinova. She adds scenarios and feelings and characters to make the story more like the best-selling potboilers she admires. As the third, she is eminently practical, a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps type with down-home wisdom. She is helpful, but has no patience with the needy.

And Antinova is needy. As the play progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that her attempts to write are not just frustrated by the temporaries. She is also struggling with her memories, which are personified in part by some rather demanding ghosts from her past (one of whom wants a pair of shoes from a specific cobbler back in Russia).

When the fourth temporary comes, half-blind and half-deaf, the line between what is real and what isn’t blurs as Antinova introduces her to her ghosts (the images of which are projected on screens) and seems to have conversations with them.

This is the part where the show breaks down into confusion. When the typist talks with a ghost’s voice, has Antinova gone mad and have we moved into the perspective of her mind? Or is she sane and the scene surreal?

The question is a fissure in an otherwise beautifully crafted piece of porcelain.

Steve Pearson’s direction is, by turns, poignant and funny against a backdrop that is delicate and dreamy like his carefully orchestrated set. J.A. Roth’s lighting softens the effect still further with a rosy glow.

The music by Tom Amos not only suits the mood, it helps create it when played in concert with Antinova’s verbal reveries, stopping suddenly when the first typist brings her back to the practical demands of dictation.

The costumes by Marta Gilberd are just right for two of Hunt’s typists. The others are colorful, but the tight blouse and short skirt with studs don’t fit the overly sentimental personality of the second typist; the fourth typist’s costume seems similarly arbitrary, although the difficulty there may simply reflect a lack of definition for this last character in the writing itself.

Antinova’s costume is the real puzzle, though. Why unkempt hair and a sloppy flowered robe over an elegant, old-fashioned velvet dress? Is this supposed to presage a descent into madness?

Mad or not, one thing is for certain in this play: Antinova cannot tell her story.

It is good that Antin can.

“WHO CARES ABOUT A BALLERINA?” By Eleanor Antin. Director, Steve Pearson. Costumes, Marta Gilberd. Lighting, J.A. Roth. Music composition and arrangement, Tom Amos. Set, Steve Pearson. Musicians: Tom Amos, Joe McNally, Chris Penney, Paul Sundfor and Bob Willy. Stage manager, Morgan Weir. Ghost photos, Becky Cohen. Ghosts: Tom Amos, Tony Cassaniti, Luke Theodore Morrison, Italo Scanga and Marsee Skidmore. With Eleanor Antin and Robyn Hunt. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sundays; Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Closes March 22. At the Bowery Theatre, 480 Elm St., San Diego.