STAGE REVIEW : ‘Payments’ Offers Some Poetic Justice

For reasons that will become clear in a minute, the Inner City Cultural Center’s first production at the Ivar Theatre is exactly what it should be: a piece by a woman about women, produced, performed and directed by women, in celebration of March as both Poetry Month and Women’s History Month.

Minnesota writer and feminist Carol Connolly’s “Payments Due,” a stage rendering of Connolly’s volume of poetry of the same name, has been given dramatic breath by a diversified ensemble, proving once again that relevant emotions know neither race, age nor cultural limitations.

Beyond the well-ruminated obviousness of this premise, there is keen poetic justice in the event. It takes place in a theater that began its life in 1951 as a legitimate house, lovingly designed and built by one man: Yeghishe Harout, owner of the adjacent Harout’s Har-Omar Restaurant, whose family was deep into the performing arts.

But the theater changed hands after Harout’s death, and for the next 15 years, before its 1989 purchase by ICCC, the Ivar played host to the nightly denigration of women. It housed adult nudie shows and rumor has it that at least one stripper committed suicide in the building. Her ghost, we’re told, can still be heard wailing.

True or false, it makes for a ruefully romantic peg on which to hang Connolly’s life-affirming poems. The performances of “Payments Due” are dedicated to this woman and to the constituency of which she was a part. These women, one hastens to add, are honored in the transaction.

While the Ivar is getting other healthy signs of refurbishment (such as new upholstered seating), it’s not ready yet, and “Payments Due” gathers its audience up on stage on folding chairs.

This suits the intimacy of the material and the confidential approach taken by the five women of the ensemble: Brioni Farrell, Pat Li, Karmin Murcelo, Violette Winge and Emily Yancy.

They stumble onto the stage--figuratively and literally--fussing with parts of their personal attire (costumer Suzanne Jackson has put them in a plain collection of brown dresses), but things smooth out as soon as they speak. They interact, share portions of each poem, gracefully weave in and out of the words. And Connolly has given them fine ones to gnash their teeth on: funny, painful, ironic, savvy, eloquent, smart.

The actors know how to vividly use their differences: Li and Murcelo focus on the more mature reflections; Farrell is sly and emphatic in her claim-your-space endorsement of Lizzy Borden; the youthful Winge is as bracing as a Minnesota wind in any number of earthy permutations, and Yancy, so well remembered as a tremulous performer in “Dont Bother Me I Cant Cope,” is now sturdy and strong in her advice to an 18-year-old and other poems.

Director Revalyn T. Golde has organized the material and its distribution fluidly (although less preoccupation with costume, especially shoes, would be welcome). And she has concretized the image of the vanished stripper. A provocatively clad mannequin, pasties in place and one red stocking clipped to a black garter belt, stands center stage, ready to be redeemed by the new women around her. A fully dressed male mannequin also stands a few steps behind: symbol of coupling, the perpetual other presence, lover and rapist.

All of these men are addressed in Connolly’s bright, alternately tender and raffish poems. They have things to say and know how to say them. For a woman who became a poet at 40, and claims to have stumbled into poetry only when another writing class was too full to take her, the results are impressive: at once down to earth and in touch with feelings, with a stinging knack for aphorism.

Call it pragmatic panache .

Connolly also launched a companion program of after-performance exchanges: a series sponsored by ICCC with the potentially misleading title “Powerful Women,” scheduled for the length of the run. Women from all walks of life have been invited, one after each performance, to discuss different kinds of power and the position of women past, present, future and within their own souls.

At least one exchange, for which “Payments Due” laid the perfect base, was as lively as the show.

‘Payments Due’

Brioni Farrell, Pat Li, Karmin Murcelo, Violette Winge, Emily Yancy: Ensemble

An Inner City Cultural Center presentation. Producer Gloria Calomee. Director Revalyn T. Golde. Poet/playwright Carol Connolly. Set Revalyn T. Golde. Lights Ves Weaver. Costumes and graphics Suzanne Jackson. Sound Mr. Cat Productions. Technical coordinator Diana Besiana.