Swashbuckler symposium

"The Girl in the Iron Mask"
Babes With Blades Theatre Company @ Raven Theater
6157 N. Clark St., Chicago
Through April 15

I've been curious to check out Babes With Blades since I heard about them years ago. Their shows are primarily concerned with presenting women who fight, figuratively and literally. Thus, not only do they have a strong feminist perspective built in, they only do productions where they can have sword battles. The Babes aren't shy about the sex appeal of this (note the use of "Girl" rather than substituting "Woman" in the title), but they also don't exploit it. It's a great concept, and although my first exposure to their work wasn't amazing, I'd like to see their ideals applied to a different production. This show is the first of a development initiative to create new plays for and about warrior women, written by R.L. Nesvet as a "variation" on the Dumas chestnut. Not being really into classic lit, my familiarity with the source material is limited to the movie the Simpsons saw in the episode where they make tomacco. All I know is that it has a bunch of castle intrigue, the king's twin brother gets locked up, he has to wear an iron mask and they're in France. Here, it's the king's twin sister. The same actress plays the sister and the king, but because all of the roles in the show are performed by women (some playing several characters), you're not wondering why no one can tell the difference between them.

I was impressed with the cast, especially Alison Dornheggin in the lead dual role. (I am also now nursing a huge crush on Morgan Manasa, who does not have enough stage time as the Duchess of Montpensier.) The fight scenes aren't slam-bang spectacular, but they're pretty fun. It's not a huge space, but they work with what they have. And here we come to the problem, the show itself. While the fights are built into the story, they disappear after a couple of early clashes until the second act. "The Girl in the Iron Mask" takes the George Lucas approach to rousing adventure: a skirmish here, a chuckle there, and then a huge honkin' helping of discussions about history and politics and legends and what have you. By the time the action sequences return, they are so much more exciting than all the royal shell game business you've been sitting through that they seem better than they really are. I understand that in this case, all that chatting is there to thoroughly paint a story about women who fought for justice and the men who held them back. That's all well and good, and I certainly support the message and intentions, but in practice it feels like one of those Godzilla movies where he comes out at the beginning and gets hurt, and then you have to wait through an hour of family drama before you get any more daikaiju action. There's also possibly a lesbian subtext which seems both timid and forced, and the ending left me a little confused. I didn't hate the show - I'm used to poor pacing and muddled storytelling due to all the bad movies I watch - but I would recommend waiting until the Babes mount their Halloween production in autumn: an anthology called "Horror Academy." Since I kept thinking about how much better "Iron Mask" would have been with spurting blood, I think I'll be checking that one out.