‘Six Women’ Scores Biggest Hit With Women in Theater

They call it “tabloid dementia,” and the title alone--”Six Women with Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know”--is enough to draw a crowd.

Written by six women and two men--in Kansas of all places--this mocking, mind-blown musical satire has caught the local fancy with a vengeance. Since the San Diego Repertory Theatre opened its production of “Six Women” last October, the show has played before more than 20,000 people in the 220-seat Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza. And fans keep coming back, bringing their friends.

What explains the popularity of this irreverent revue? This is a show with skits starring a woman’s severed head, sexually active Ken and Barbie dolls, and a tippling housewife who interacts with the characters in her favorite TV soap operas.

The reason most cited for the regular sellout performances is that the show was written primarily by women.

“I can relate to it,” said Bette Gorton, who was taken to the play by friends recently for her birthday. “Men can enjoy it, but I think for women it really strikes home.”

Others interviewed during intermission of the same performance last week said the show was just pure fun.

“We had to laugh when they said, ‘I’m going to saw . . . my precious kids in half,’ ” said Linda Balistreri, who attended the play with her friend Janet Williams and their husbands. “We have kids. We can relate to those days.”

Williams said she thought the show played especially well to women in their 30s, like them.

“I liked the ‘Let’s get together for lunch tomorrow; No I’m busy; How about next week? Next summer?’ scene. It’s very typical.”

Performed by a cast of six women who sing and gyrate to the music of a live band, the revue sends up those less-than-subtle elements of popular culture such as tabloids, quiz shows, soap operas and popular psychology, as well as family life and the current administration in Washington.

“It’s a social-political satire on the saturation of America by the pop media,” said Sam Woodhouse, the revue’s director. “We had no idea it would be this popular. It speaks from women to women about contemporary America. It strikes some major chords.”

Toby Dorfman has seen the revue three times and agrees. Dorfman, who is 54 and a radiographer at a local hospital, says the play reminds her of the feeling she used to get from older musicals such as “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma!”

“Those musicals were such fun. Yes, some bad things happened, but they would always leave you feeling good,” Dorfman said. “This is a takeoff on God, apple pie and motherhood. It’s based on the National Enquirer. When you realize that is the largest-selling newspaper in the country, it scares me.”

Dorfman said she rarely sees any play or movie twice. But she said she has returned to “Six Women,” each time with fresh friends in tow, because she wanted them to share in the show’s offhanded treatment of society’s sacred cows.

“Six Women” is not for everyone. People do walk out, said Rosanna Coppedge, one of the show’s co-creators.

“We know that some people will find some things insulting,” she said.

“Six Women” was first performed in a workshop in Kansas City in May, 1986. Its point of reference is the weekly tabloids.

“It’s about the insanity of the world,” Coppedge said.

Mark Houston, who composed the show’s pop and rock score and is performing in the band, agreed.

“We just felt the world is so insane. Everything is new, super-improved, super-important. Everything is competing for attention, and nothing’s important anymore.”

One of the show’s other attractions is its look. This isn’t Hollywood’s version of America. These are average people.

“It’s not like a standard book musical with an ingenue, a character person, and male and female leads,” Coppedge said. “I’d say the majority of us are character actresses.”

The nondescript clothes of bright, primary colors are designed to obscure the cast member’s figures. Indeed, in the opening scene they resemble hefty construction workers investigating what looks like the inside of an exploded head.

“They weren’t looking for Cosmopolitan’s idea of a woman (during casting),” said Kate Kiley, whose stage persona reminds one of Ethel Merman. “That isn’t what they got. They got me.”

Woodhouse acknowledged what other playgoers said--that men do not appreciate “Six Women” as much as women do. Woodhouse cited a personal experience.

“Going into previews, I was on the verge of savagely cutting some of the text in the Barbie and Ken scene,” he said. “That scene has proven to be the funniest and most pointed in the play. The reason (he wanted to cut it) is that I’m a man, and I don’t understand the iconography of dolls because I never had any.

“It speaks to women because it is from them. As open-minded as I like to think I am, it’s something that’s not in my experience and it’s impossible to comprehend the magic of it.”

Vivian Kennison, 48, has seen “Six Women” three times, bringing her sister, mother and daughter on return visits.

“I thought it was really funny the first time, then I realized how really sad much of it was,” she said. “It’s funny and yet very germane.”

Kennison, who said she may see the revue a fourth time before it closes in early April, enjoyed the class-reunion, the Barbie-Doll and severed-head scenes.

“In the severed-head (scene, the character) spent all her life trying to be what everybody else wanted her to be. I used it as an example to one of the young girls in our office to take a look at it and decide what you want to be before you’re sitting with your head on a platter.”

While women enjoy “Six Women,” they generally enjoy it more when they are with other women, say those associated with the show.

“The women restrain themselves a bit because they are sitting next to a man,” Woodhouse said. “Then they come back in two weeks with their girlfriends and roll in the aisle.”