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Critics' Reviews
Joe Pollack - KWMU
Abby may be good enough to work as an assassin, but when it comes to a promotion, well, she's a woman, and she's fighting a familiar but unsuccessful battle. To make a bad pun, that's the trigger in "Killing Women," a new comedy by Washington U. alumna Marissa Wegryzn. The Hot City Theatre production opens its new home in the Kranzberg Center, a small, shiny space in the long-ago Woolworth's at the once-fabled corner of Grand and Olive. It will run through Oct. 4.
Julie Layton, who plays the tough cookie as well as anyone in town, is Abby, trapped in her job by her gender despite a good eye and an icy heart. But Peter Mayer, portraying her boss with an accent as muddy and mysterious as his rationale, won't promote her. A sluggish start picks up late in the first act, when Abby is training a ditzy suburban housewife, hoping to install her as succes sor. Lauren Dusek is terrific in the role. Cale Haupert is funny as an ice cream-loving killer, and Adam Flores is fine in three small roles.
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Killing Women/Antigone
By Judith Newmark
POST-DISPATCH THEATER CRITIC
09/25/2008
The stylish productions that opened last weekend in midtown — HotCity's "Killing Women" and the St. Louis Actors' Studio's production of Jean Anouilh's "Antigone" — practically invite the audience to create a private imaginary play. Call it "The Heroine Switch."
What if Abby (Julie Layton), the tough professional killer at the center of "Killing Women," and Antigone (Emily Baker), a tragic Theban princess determined to defy authorities and properly bury her brother, could step into each other's plays?
The dynamics wouldn't be all that different. You'd still have a young, strong-minded woman under the thumb of a powerful older man. He genuinely likes her, but that doesn't mean that he has to take her seriously. In the end, she must either bend to his will or follow her own, dangerously defiant lights. But imagine how differently their stories would play out.
Would Abby debate with Creon (John Contini, in a beautifully layered performance), king of Thebes, about the nature of governance and morality? Hah! She'd figure out how to get his gun, take care of business and run for it. Abby has exactly the practical, get-things-done direction that Antigone lacks.
Antigone might have some trouble with Ramone (smooth Peter Mayer), a businessman who heads a ring of hit-people in which Abby has hit a "glass ceiling." But in the tradition of movie crime lords, Ramone flaunts a European elegance that includes deference to women.
Consequently, Antigone would have a chance to persuade him that she is right: Human beings lose everything if they lose respect for one another's humanity. Even if he killed her afterward, Ramone would be destroyed by what she said, just as Creon is. Antigone has what Abby lacks, a sense of herself not just as a physical but as a moral being.
Different as they are, the productions are fascinating. Both directors — William Whitaker at HotCity, Milton Zoth at the Studio — avoid sentimentalizing their appealing heroines, and both display a strong sense of style.
Whitaker's play is the first production at the Kranzberg, a small, smart new theater in a former drugstore. Sean M. Savoie's Mondrian-inspired set shows off the attractive space and is simple enough to allow for the many changes of place that playwright Marisa Wegryzn dictates.
Although the play is pretty violent, it's also very funny, with lots of comedy based on the "Charlie's Angels"-like treatment of Abby and her colleagues, flirtatious Lucy (Kine Brown) and motherly Gwen (Lauren Dusek). Wegryzn runs into trouble with the conclusion, mostly because she never really explains the larger society in which her play takes place. Are the killers worried about being arrested? Do they have any hope of "normal" future lives? They act as if they do, but maybe they're kidding themselves. Maybe we all are.