[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Promenade Playhouse’s The (Mostly) True Story of a Common Scold, by award-winning playwright Mike Teverbaugh, directed by Natalia Lazarus.
What an absolute delight it is to see new plays about old things. Particularly when the stories are so very relevant to our collective present political ‘dramas.’
The (Mostly) True Story of a Common Scold is a beautifully written play by the celebrated TV writer Mike Teverbaugh who has lately turned his deft hand to plays. He is also himself a journalist, which is perhaps why he is so fascinated with the story of America’s first female journalist Anne Royall.
Coming from impoverished beginnings, Anne Royall married a gentleman farmer 20 years her senior who happily gave her the run of his extensive library and arranged for her education. Upon his death, his family fought her for her inheritance and won…putting Anne in peril unless she was able to support herself. She travelled the country writing about those she met and all she saw in her own bold, sardonic words and she made a name for herself and managed to support her life, free of men and very proud to be.
This play covers the later years of her life when she had settled in DC. As you might imagine she was not popular with everyone and the Evangelists, who were bent on a shadowy political takeover of the country, were unable to silence her. She discovered their brazen political plans and made it her work to expose them, the separation of Church and State being a central theme in her work.
In the end, after harassing her, turning over her wagon almost killing her, and generally trying to make her life a misery, they had her arrested on charges of being a “Common Scold.” An ancient English law somehow still active post revolution. I have a feeling there may be many other archaic anti-female laws similar to this still hidden away. Anne was found guilty by a deeply biased judge and sentenced to public dunking in the river with the use of a barbaric “chair” on a winch…something like they used in the trials of witches. As an old woman, she would never have survived the three dunkings she was given, but fortunately, the local DC newspaper men came to their senses in the final minutes before her sentence was carried out and paid her fine.
What a story this is! What a woman Anne Royall was. An original thinker. Fiercely independent, scrupulous, placing ethics and country above all else. A model for our times indeed. This play uses her words and this truly traumatic season of her life to remind us that we have come not so very far at all. Women may have more rights now than Anne Royall did, but we are in danger of losing them. In fact we already have lost autonomy over our own bodies and what’s next? All this nonsense driven by evil men using religion…just like 1829.
The stage acts as every location, cleverly and simply moving the story from place to place, the male actors taking on many parts, the females with just one. Anne Royall is central of course but her maid Hazel, played by the incandescent Zuri Alexander, has as much to say and just as much to lose as Anne, played with fearsome passion and incredible wit by Dendrie Taylor.
Every single actor in this wonderful, funny and insightful play is excellent. They are all truly gifted, working together to fill this story up with character, poignancy and the kind of subtle reference to our crazy political climate that leaves us shaking our heads and ready to fight as hard Anne Royall fought, and to the bitter end.
Bravo to the writer Mike Teverbaugh for taking on such an important and long-forgotten story and for doing so with as much heart and intelligence as Anne Royall did with everything in her life. I wonder what she would have to say about this play and these times we live in.
This brilliant play runs through October 27, so you have some time, but time flies lately, so don’t dawdle!! This a a rare opportunity to see such a wonderful play with actors as fine as any in a theatre anywhere! I highly recommend it!
Where:
Promenade Playhouse
10931 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90064
When:
September 20 – October 27
Friday 8pm, Saturday 7pm and Sunday 2pm