Ought to be in pictures

>> Camera, Woman is too static for a play about the movies

by AMY BARRATT

"The Golden Age of Hollywood." It's a phrase that conjures up the unreal, gauze-over-the-camera beauty of stars like Ingrid Bergman and Rita Hayworth, a magical world of big studios with stables of stars.

R.M. Vaughan's play Camera, Woman promises a peek behind the scenes at one such studio, Columbia Pictures, during one day in 1943. Better yet, it promises a glimpse at the kind of stuff the Hays Office was created to protect the public from.

Playing at the MAI during Divers/Cité, Camera, Woman, depicts a Hollywood community that is far less conservative and wholesome than the movies it produces. To begin with, all the girls are apparently sleeping with one another. The central character is butch director Dorothy Arzner, played here by Renée-Madeleine Leguerrier.

The male playwright has written some very interesting female characters, most of them based on real figures. Apart from Arzner, there's British actress Merle Oberon (played by Miranda Handford), who comes off as far more interesting than I've ever given the Wuthering Heights star credit for. Then there's legendary gossip columnist Louella Parsons, played to pushy perfection by Janis Kirshner. The male sex is represented by studio head Harry Cohn (Gordon Masten), and finally there's a fictional actress the playwright calls Rose Lindstrom, played by a bleached blonde Danielle Skene.

If this Montreal premiere, a collaboration between Sin 4 and Out productions, doesn't quite come together, the chief culprit is that old standby: not enough rehearsal. I spoke with director David Oiye midway through the process and he had lots of great ideas, some of which were semi-realized in the performance I saw opening night.

For set and costumes, Eo Sharp has restricted herself to a palette of black, white and shades of grey, to invoke the look of black and white film. What's missing in the look of the show is the "move" in movies. All of the action takes place on a bare soundstage and, more importantly, in the memory of Arzner. Surely a film director's memories would more closely resemble a film than a play? But Vaughan wrote a play, not a screenplay, so any theatre company has to solve that problem. Projections might have helped, or a rotating set--anything to give a feeling of flow. We don't get that in this static production where actors enter from the wings, stand and deliver lines, then exit.

It's a talky script with a central conflict that wears thin by intermission. Arzner has all but finished filming a war picture called First Comes Courage. There's just one day of shooting left and everyone is getting their first look at Arzner's pages for the final scene. She wants Merle Oberon and another actress to kiss onscreen. Harry Cohn says no way. He and Arzner argue back and forth in scene after scene while the two actresses are alternately titillated and terrified at the prospect. Meanwhile, Louella Parsons lurks about the studio, enjoying a level of access that journalists today only dream of, threatening to ruin the careers of everyone involved.

Leguerrier gives a very internal performance as Arzner. Her soft, mellow voice at first gives the impression of someone who doesn't need to raise her voice to get her way, but she quickly begins to sound like someone unable or unwilling to stick up for herself. Despite her striding walk, her body language is also turned in. Her Dorothy Arzner is more tortured artist than firebrand and in the end she is more of a victim than a heroine.

Camera, Woman through Aug. 12, at the MAI, $10-18, 982-3386