- OTHER MEDIA
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- "Bone to Pick" the best of three shorts by Cutting Ball
- SF Weekly August 6, 2008 (Molly Rhodes)
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- "Someone needs to treat me like a piece of meat." This opening
line from "Bone to Pick" is just a taste of the raw sensuality
packed into the world premiere of local playwright Eugenie Chan's take
on the Greek myth of Ariadne, who fell in love with Theseus and helped
him defeat the Minotaur, only to be abandoned. The one-woman play is paired
with two other shorts by Gertrude Stein and Suzan-Lori Parks, and although
Cutting Ball delivers all three with its usual stylized flair, "Bone"
grabs you and doesn't let go. Ria, as Ariadne is called in the play, has
been reduced to waiting tables at a dirty backwoods diner ("princess
of the pie case — when we had one"). She's forced to survive
on baked beans as she fights off the crude advances of Theo. Yet Ria is
no shrinking violet, and actress Paige Rogers sinks her teeth into Chan's
muscular, direct language, never letting the audience or her wayward lover
off the hook. The climax of the play doesn't quite deliver the punch you
expect, but there are so many rich treats along the way that you are left,
like Ria, already eager for more of the meat Chan and Rogers have to offer.
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