SALLY AND MARSHA
at Cafe Voltaire
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The show that relies the least on Tampax, hairspray, and panty hose for laughs is Sally and Marsha, Sybille Pearson’s play about a South Dakota housewife displaced to New York who befriends a Manhattan neighbor. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this premise, aside from its cliche-ridden predictability (I’ll bet you can guess which is a sunny optimist who keeps a clean kitchen and which is a neurotic, pseudointellectual slob). In spite of their differences, by the end of scene two they’ve become fast friends and a barrage of long, heartfelt talks results.
Marsha (the New York native) accuses herself of not being a good mother, sees her therapist five days a week, never finishes anything, gets nauseated by sex, and smokes incessantly. Sally is a pregnant mother/goddess; she bakes pies, attends church, enjoys a healthy sensuality with both her husband and her babies, and makes her own pot holders. Her only complaint is that there never seems to be enough money. She wants to be a “hundred-thousand-dollar wife,” but her husband will have to sell a lot of soap for his Amway-style company for that to happen.
The characters in Lee Kalcheim’s Moving nearly fall over in their rush to explain themselves in the simplest of terms. Since Moving is a one act, perhaps they just feel pressed for time.
