Stark, Personal Look at Breast Cancer

Women’s breasts may be a commercial asset when properly displayed but not when colored purple for radiation treatment. Allaire Paterson’s one-woman solo piece, “Purple Breasts,” playing at the Met Theatre, is about the fear evoked by breast cancer survivors (“I’m going to be ugly”) when the removal of these revered objects of desire is certain and about the raging and grasping for hope when cancer reoccurs.

This piece was originally created by Daryl Lindstrom, Gloria Symon, Sidney Markus, Susan McMahon and Paterson. After Lindstrom died of metastatic breast cancer in 1989, Paterson commissioned Bridget Kowalczyk to adapt it into this one-woman show. Kowalczyk integrates abstract representations of events with realistic monologues that are illustrated or summarized by the slides and titles.

Startlingly frank yet sharply humorous, this play gives a sometimes unflattering portrait of a desperate woman and her family and friends--a mother in denial, a friend not returning calls because she can’t deal with her friend’s medical crisis and a woman who equated her breasts “with the ability to be loved,” grasping at any slight promise of a cure and raging at her husband’s inability to cope.

Paterson isn’t always able to create distinct characters, but is generally effective in each role. Kowalczyk directs her own adaptation with a sardonic flair that skates on the edge of political activism but reserves judgment in favor of concentrating on the personal nature of such tragedy.

* “Purple Breasts,” Met Theatre, 1089 Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 17. $15. (213) 957-1152. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.