Some dialogue crackles. Some dialogue pops. Some dialogue flops. And then there's that lesser-known fourth kind: it makes you laugh and think, but not necessarily in that order.
Too few theatrical productions can pull off edgy without being awkward. Even worse, too few actors can pull off innuendo without being trite. "Pulp" in this capacity is a flawless mix of true intellect and true comedy - an inescapably fascinating and invariably caustic potion.
Set in the post-WWII era of female malaise, Patricia Kane's "Pulp" is an engrossing comedy centered on Terry Logan (Dayle Ballentine), a straight-talking lesbian who was forced to leave the Women's Air Corps after her tryst with a general's daughter. Finding herself in pseudo-exile, Terry takes up residence in a small apartment above the Well, a Chicago gay bar where, somewhat ironically, women perform as men (think of "The Birdcage" on Vicodin).
As both the "newest butch in town" and the bar's newest waitress, Terry sparks the interest of Bing (Whitney Cohen), a performer, waitress and full-time seductress at the Well. While these two characters tease and entice each other, Vivian (Maureen Keller), the mysterious patroness of the lesbian haunt, discovers that she too has feelings for Terry.
But Kane, who also wrote 2001's "Seven Moves," would never let the romantic complexity be so one-dimensional. Behind the counter, Pepper (Stephanie Carlson), the Well's innocent and omniscient bartender, secretly loves Winny (Lindsay Flathers), an annoyingly boyish performer at the Well who has yet to come to terms with her homosexuality. One wonders why Winny would work at a gay bar if she has yet to admit to herself or anyone else that she is, in fact, gay. Perhaps she felt she could hide this "secret" behind her overwhelmingly feminine cabaret acts: one as a lounge singer, the other as a rifleman.
It's a shame Winny's character was not more authentically crafted, because her speech near the end of the play is intended to be climactic. Unfortunately Winny is so childish before this scene that the heightened emotionality in her speech is just awkward. It almost borders on the comic when the short-haired, male-clothing wearing, lesbian-bar employed woman "comes out."
But what's most important and intriguing about "Pulp," which has won After Dark Awards for "Best New Work" and "Outstanding Production," is the role Terry plays as the impetus for these women to establish their own identities. Terry says, on numerous occasions throughout the play, "I'm a lesbian, plain and simple. I don't make any bones about it." Her comfort with her sexuality is what eventually drives Winny to be come to terms with her own, and essentially compels Vivian to confront the demons and contradictions of her past as well. At the height of Terry's frustration, she says to Vivian, "There's passion inside you. I want it to come out."
As Terry helps these women realize themselves she makes a significant discovery - she has yet to completely realize her own identity.
Rather than attempting to awkwardly add to this tension, director Jason Southerland, veteran of the 2001's "The Laramie Project," skillfully feeds off of what is already there. In a momentous scene, Vivian is singing for Terry as Bing looks on, alone and uneasy. Bing, used to being the center of attention, can only helplessly watch as Vivian seduces Terry. Southerland captures their love triangle precisely, with its sexuality, confusion and frustration.
The result of this social dynamic is a restrained and latent tension, which manifests itself seamlessly in the women's cabaret performances at the Well. Yes, the performances are tritely postmodern, but their significance supersedes any stylistic clich?©® The performers do not dance merely for the audience; they dance to find themselves and each other.
The purposefully absurd melodrama and noir techniques throughout "Pulp" are a comical homage to the much heavier pulp fiction of a different era. Ostensibly this is simply a vehicle for laughs, but what Kane truly pursues is much more profound. Plays and literature about homosexuality in the past have been almost exclusively pessimistic and tragic, but Kane's recreation of the same material is decidedly optimistic. In "Pulp," each woman is matched with a partner. In much older works of the same genre, each woman would be matched with a coffin.
"Pulp" suggests a transforming stance on lesbianism. Unlike the inner-guilt associated with homosexuality in such totemic plays as Tennessee Williams's 1955 hit "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," Kane shows us a different side of the debate: it is social constraints, rather than personal or moral ones, that initially silence these women. After "Pulp," perhaps they will be silent no more.
