STAGE REVIEWS : Beauty Salon Banter Is All Washed Up in ‘Cuts’

Adventurous American theater used to be guided by the spirit of progressive group action--and sometimes, group writing. A few adventurers are still doing it: Witness the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which just graced Santa Monica Festival ’91. More group writing is going on in the same neighborhood, but it feels like an appropriation.

The Cate Caplin-directed ensemble piece, “Choice Cuts,” is someone’s idea of a cute night out for Westside yuppies. The cuteness begins with setting the play for five female voices in Ravello Hair Salon, as four of the women (Sydney Coberly, Laura Crosson, Barbara O’Neill Ferris and Laura Piening) talk while getting their hair done, with one beautician (Penny Peyrot) bouncing around from one to the other.

It’s all soon lost in the rinse. The gabfest, in which each actress wrote her own monologue (subsequently cut by Caplin into pieces for a collage-like structure), goes no deeper than the most banal remarks about a woman’s self-image (“It’s much more important how you feel inside”). This is the kind of thing Eve Arden knew how to make funny and ironic; I left the salon missing the late, great comedienne more than ever.