Word: cate
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...American Dream seems especially dated. It's the story of what is supposed to be a parody of an ideal American couple, circa 1960. Mommy (Holly Cate) spends her days shopping or meeting with her women's auxilliary club, while Daddy (Donal Logue) spends his reading the paper in his easy chair. Mommy wears a bright pink party dress, the kind that domestic ex-prom queens like June Cleaver and Donna Reed wore on TV sitcoms in the 1950s and early 1960s. In fact, TV-sitcom theme songs play in the background to drive home the point of Mommy...
...actors do well with this deadpan satire. Standouts are Cate, whose Mommy is both childishly petulant and sexually aggressive, and Bledsoe, whose delivery punctures Albee's pretensions as well as those of the other characters...
...Hedda, played here by Holly Cate, is never a bore to watch. Cate portrays Hedda with proportionate coldness, but wisely refrains from histrionics. Hedda's fury isn't the tumultuous kind of a Lady Macbeth or a Medea. In her appropriately antiseptic delivery, Cate invokes the quiet strength of Ibsen's heroine...
Hedda seems to be convinced that everything she touches turns ridiculous and vile. Actually, the show suffers when Cate is out of reach. With few exceptions, the rest of the cast seems to dote on the wild fancies of the beautiful Hedda. They come to life with her fiery entrances and languish miserably in her absence...
...Stella, Cate may not have as developed a part as Bledsoe, but also does not aim at a strong performance. At the most serious moments, her voice tremors as if she were going to laugh. She also overdoes the sentimentality of the part, falling into Stanley's arms in a way more appropriate to a soap opera than to high-class drama...