Evelyn Brown by Maria Irene Fornes (review)

screaming stutter dance, the object dropped from a great height, the silent monologue , and the repetitions of speech and action. More serious thoughts can exist along with simple structure and child-like subject matter (cf. C. Chaplin and B. Keaton). Although Curious George doesn't touch on the symphonic profundity of an Einstein on the Beach, its intimate chamber-work rhythms evoke no less moving feelings. The world could really use a strong Jack Smith show to counter the looming advent of Ronald Reagan, but Exotic Landlordism of the World is not it. In fact neither of the three performances even approached being a show of any kind. Among the "acts": the Brassiere Girls of Baghdad fought with Smith and trashed some of the art on display at the venue; an inept dancer read for hours from Yvonne DeCarlo's biography; and a junkielooking "genie" played a desultory sax solo and later broke Smith's only stage light. All the while Smith ignored his own non-show; he passed the time fiddling with props which were never used and with dope which emphatically was. This was the worst, most terminal of the several suicidal Smith disasters I have seen, and I don't see how the patient can recover. Exotic Landlordism belongs to no world and certainly not to that of the genuine original who is Jack Smith. John Howell Maria Irene Fornes, Evelyn Brown. Theatre for the New City (March). Evelyn Brown is an unusual piece for playwright Maria Irene Fornes because it is the only work of hers she hasn't written. Instead, using the "found" material from 42 the diary of a New Englander, the woman of the title, who died in the early part of this century, she fashioned a theatrical work that is more performance than play. A handsome, simple pine wood interior of a house served as the setting for two performers , Margaret Harrington (an actress ) and Aileen Passlof (a dancer)-both of them called Evelyn-who move about the nooks and crannies and the deep reaches of the performance space. The spatial structure collaborates with the textual material to reveal all aspects of inner , private space, for this is a piece about Evelyn Brown and her home. The text was comprised of the stark diary entries which were simply the unadorned repetitions of the woman's daily activities . Live and on tape she recounted her chores of cooking, cleaning, and organizing a household, never including an observation of her own be it joy, anger, tiredness, irritation or desire. Her universe was founded solely on what work she did at home. One might be tempted to believe that Fornes's piece, which she also directed, centered on oppression of women by housework, but this was not the case. The precise, simple movements of the two performers , setting table after table, cleaning , and folding linens, sometimes even dancing, as the text was repeated created a pattern of a woman taking pride in a job done with a great deal of care and preceision. Yet, there were moments of quiet desperation in the performance of Passloff-in my interpretation Brown's alter ego whom Fornes as a woman of 1980 created as the other side of the silent woman-who could be found staring into a wall, or muffling a scream in what were powerful dramatic moments to counterpoint the lack of commentary in the execution of the tasks. It was, however, the beauty and sim plicity and pride in quotidian tasks that Fornes emphasized, not the oppression of Evelyn Brown, and only those looking for a feminist polemic would think otherwise. Housework is belittled now, so Fornes offered something of a statement about another way, another time, of living, when the work that women did in the home was appreciated for its certain grace not, as it has now, fallen into disgrace. Fornes, who has long been a feminist, is by no means calling for a return to premechanized drudgery: I think she's just reminding us of an attitude toward the home that is lost today. If you look at the handwork in a crocheted lace doily, do you admire its delicacy or think...