The tiara is tarnished in Princess
Sky Gilbert’s play takes aim at plastic values and messed up gender images
How many princesses do you know?
Of course, there’s always been icy images of the likes of Princess Grace of Monaco, Princess Diana of England and any number of rock goddesses who created their own princess-like images peaking coyly from album covers. They all suggest entitlement. And then there are the ones created by Disney to make little girls dream in technicolor. Maybe little boys, too. They’re just feminist enough to be popular in their glitzy oh-so female costumes and very dark eye shadow.
You know the sort I mean; the ones who dance across the screen in films such as “The Little Mermaid,” “Aida” or “Beauty and the Beast.” Damn it, they’ve taken over Broadway, if not the world at large. And of course they have issues.
Take Mary Beth, for instance. She’s the apparition in orange head scarf and appliquéd skirt who hobbles into a trendy café in Toronto ostensibly to reconnect with and put the bite on her estranged, notso-likable father.
She needs money. He let her down when she was growing up. So, of course he’s to blame for her medical condition. Just maybe that’s why she lives a fantasy of finding some ugly nerd of a boyfriend she can turn into a handsome prince. Shades of her once favourite film; you know the one, the one with the singing teapot and that annoying little kid Chip. There’s also a feisty female named Belle and a poor beast of a prince who just might be transmogrified by real love, if only he can find it.
Once Disney heroines were endearing like “Snow White” and “Cinderella.” Now they’re all fake role models who must save the man of their heart’s desire because we can’t have things the other way around. Ho-hum.
Hamilton playwright Sky Gilbert has great fun finding some dark moments and serious storytelling with “Princess,” a cynical take on a modern Disney World.
It’s hard to say which Disney role model Gilbert finds most disturbing here, but since this one-act play is called “Princess” I think he’s coming out on the dark side of fake femininity and women who cast themselves as victims.
“It’s not my fault,” Mary Beth keeps telling her frequently silent dad, as well as those of us listening to the ridiculous litany of her troubled life.
Do we feel sorry for her? Yes, in a strange way she’s an object of pity. With her little tiara firmly plopped on her babushka-covered head and her eyes wild with imagination, she’s something created by the cartoon image of the politely controlling female, who now takes over from those rescuing male figures in the newer Disney movies.
“You can do anything,” she tells herself, just like Elsa in the popular Disney romp “Frozen.” But can she?
Of course not, she’s too crushed by the role she inhabited in her own dysfunctional family life.
So is Disney a sham? Are those who continue to pump out those Disney movies with their gooey music and politically correct storylines responsible for dumbing down reality and creating the sort of sugar-coated Broadway entertainment that is swamping the New York stage these days? Of course they are. And we’re paying close to $150 a pop to see them? How dumb is that?
Gilbert’s intriguing, somewhat polarizing little drama “Princess” begins with Cliff Edwards intoning the sweet lyrics of “When You Wish Upon A Star” from the vintage Disney epic “Pinocchio.” Its hopeful message, telling us that wishing will make it so, might be considered a sham by all those who, like Mary Beth, have dreamed for too long, only to discover life isn’t quite that simple.
Anna Chatterton is at times provoking, at times vulnerable and always believable as the tormented Mary Beth.
Ralph Small as her sorry, but not quite foolish father, adds a sense of reality to the prime-time dreaming of his estranged daughter.
Chatterton’s performance is very eccentric, all rumpled faces and burning eyes like some wild creature desperate for happiness. Well, that’s how Gilbert has written her.
The play belongs to Chatterton, but Small’s perplexed performance as her troubled father is a gem of listening, reacting and finding a great deal of meaning in silence.
The set for this little gem of a play is perfect. Very milk-white cups and teapot are placed on a café table, along with little sprigs of plastic trying to rise hopefully out of a puny bud vase. In the background is a red brick wall that neither character can truly climb over. Talk about a metaphor.
Gilbert has directed his play with minimal intrusion, allowing the story to speak quite eloquently about a world troubled by plastic values and screwed-up gender images. Go see it.