~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
69Stories: One Pervert's Tale and No Good Deed

by Mollena Williams

 

Edgy coming-of-age tales woven into 2 solo shows

review by Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle October 19, 2004

 

"Crazy," Mollena Williams sings to the tune made famous by Patsy Cline, "I'm crazy to be masochistic." She isn't referring to a garden-variety emotional state. "The beatings with steel rods and shocks from the cattle prods," she sings -- along with references to floggings, staplers and being sewn to a table -- "make it crazy to bottom to you."

Williams' good-humored confessional monologue, "69 Stories: One Pervert's Tale," was a minor underground hit for the adventurous Crowded Fire Theater Company three years ago. She's revised it since then, with director and Fire founder Rebecca Novick, and developed a new solo piece, "No Good Deed," a sort of autobiographical prequel, directed by Amy Mueller. The shows opened in tandem Saturday and play alternate nights at Exit on Taylor through Nov. 13.

Each monologue is pleasant, funny and generally entertaining, though "69" is the funnier, more fully elaborated show. The versatile Williams -- her expressive face topped with close-cropped blond hair -- graces her strong presence and vivid acting skills with an engagingly warm persona. She's a very capable storyteller as well, sketching characters with deft performance strokes. What she and her directors haven't done, though, is create compelling dramatic shapes or develop the pieces' thematic resonance. The longer, two-act "69" seems more complete if only because it covers more ground -- and is humorously framed by Williams' sadomasochist rewrites of "Crazy" and "(These are a few of) My Favorite Things" (feel free to use your imagination). A sexual coming-of-age story, it traces her life from curious, warmly indulged childhood in New York City to full-blown S and M "games," "parties" and "scenes" in San Francisco.

Some charming stories of childhood myopia and the fates of unfortunate pets blend with an early eagerness to become sexually active. Williams doesn't realize that ambition until her midteens, with an adventurous, long-lasting threesome. A clearly incompatible college relationship (she was studying theater and he was a film major) leads her to Los Angeles, where -- on the bounce from a period of heady, hasty bisexual activity -- a blissful fling with a touring English rock musician introduces her to the joys of sexual and psychological submission.

All of this takes place in the first act, with Williams working on a barely furnished stage -- a rocker, a black vinyl couch (set by Pegeen McGhan) -- occasionally complementing her purple shift with costumer Bree Hylkema's well-chosen accessories. Sporadic projected titles and images add little to the presentation, but the story generates a fairly strong hold.

Its charm dissipates in the second act, in which Williams -- with a childhood flashback or two -- begins to explore her penchant for being bound, spanked and physically hurt. Some of the sex scenes are vividly and creatively described, and the traumatic tale of her father's experiences in a Vietnam War naval disaster is compellingly told. But Williams doesn't, as she promises, "come to grips with being a pervert" so much as depict a few aspects of the life. Her search for "emotional connectivity" is lacking in narrative and structural connections.

The shorter "No Good Deed" is more tightly focused and framed, but considerably slighter. It's a prequel to "69" only in that it takes place before Williams moved to San Francisco and S and M -- during time served in Contra Costa as a customer service star (proudly brandishing her employee-of- the-year plaque) for Wells Fargo. She'd come to Wells Fargo as the result of a takeover of another bank, which she delightfully depicts as brutal corporate rape.

The story centers upon Williams being charged with sexual harassment of a co-worker and radiates from there to depict the hard-drinking, party-hearty customer service crew. Williams peppers it with sharply realized, comic characterizations -- a bubbly blond sometime lover, the faux-sympathetic human resources administrator -- in Hylkema's apt, minimal costume changes. Mueller stages it crisply, with ominous interrogation lighting by Heather Basarab and humorous sound effects by Paul Lancour.

It doesn't quite hold together, though. The humor is ingratiating and performed with delightful flourishes, but the central story -- the mystery of the harassment charges -- is allowed to slip away in confusion rather than resolution. That may be a testament to Williams' veracity. Clear explanations are the exception rather than the rule in most of our lives. But it leaves her "Deed" unfinished.

Home / Now Playing & Coming Soon / Back to Media List / To email us