‘White Chicks’ shines, despite its age
Watching John Ford Noonan’s 1980 period piece, “A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking,” is a lot like listening to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar).”
It’s entertaining and professionally done, but as dated as a Helen Reddy eight-track.
The themes of this two-woman comedy can be summed up as (1) Female bonding is good, (2) Women don’t have to be staid, boring housewives, and (3) “You go, girl!”
After about 20 years of Oprah, we can hardly be expected to find these insights to be startling, or even insights.
The good news about this Interplayers production is, we don’t have to. This is essentially an odd-couple comedy, and it succeeds on the fundamental basis of making us laugh. Troy Nickerson’s direction is snappy and bright and the performance of Erica Chiles-Curnutte is practically a workshop in comic character, timing and movement.
Chiles-Curnutte plays Hannah Mae, the lower-class Texan half of this odd pair of suburban neighbors. Hannah Mae comes clomping into the upper-class Westchester County suburbs in a pair of stretch pants and high heels, like a plate of pork rinds plopped into a country club buffet line.
Chiles-Curnutte has the body language down perfectly: The ungainly stomp, the big-hair toss, the clueless stare (at times) and the I-won’t-tolerate-any-B.S. stare (at other times). Her Texas accent was broad without sounding cartoonish or condescending, which is no small feat.
Her timing was astonishing from beginning to end. Once, when Maude launches into a long and self-pitying speech, Hannah looks at her for the exactly correct half-second before drawling, “Well, that’s a load of crap.”
Most astonishing of all, she accomplishes all of this with a character written almost shamelessly to redneck stereotype. If Chiles-Curnutte can mine gold out of this, she truly has the right stuff.
Karen Nelsen has her fine moments as Maude as well, yet she is saddled with an even more debilitating stereotype, at least from an actress’ point of view: the clench-jawed, uptight, affluent WASP.
She has to spend most of the play rigidly denying her feelings. She’s funny and endearing when she lets loose – she makes quite the exotic dancer at one point. Yet when it comes to comedy, the loud Texan will trump the reserved Yankee every time.
Nickerson milks a lot of extra laughs out of this script with some wild physical business. And for a show with such an unfortunate title, he allows the women very little opportunity to sit around talking. He has them on the move and full of energy. I wondered why the scene changes took so long, since the scene never actually changes. Yet I didn’t mind too much, since he filled the dark gaps with appropriate music, from ABBA to Bonnie Raitt.
Now, about this script. It’s astonishing to me that this thing has lasted so long – or that theaters continue to choose it. The situations are phony, especially the patently unbelievable way the friendship begins. The conflicts, mostly involving men we never see, are exclusively of the straw-man variety. And the social commentary – well, maybe it once seemed daring.
It’s a play I’d be happy never to see again. Yet if I do, I hope it’s done with even half this much talent.