Word: drabs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...limited release around Boston. The story of two young women from the gray, depressing city of Liverpool where the largest local employer is a chicken processing plant, Letter focuses on Elaine (Alexandra Pigg) and Theresa's (Margie Clark) quest for adventure and escapist relief from their normally drab lives...
...says zinc oxide has to be ugly? This summer the goop that surfers and sailors put on their faces to prevent sunburn can be stylish as well as protective. Thanks to new products called Zinka and Le Zink, zinc-oxide cream is no longer available only in drab white. It now comes in hot pink, deep purple and many other shades, enabling sun worshipers to color-coordinate their noses with their beach balls and bikinis...
...director Ronni Marshak, using a mixed bag of students, alumni and professional actors, has provided only a competent illustration of the operetta, animating the characters and plot, but failing to provide the imagination necessary to save the unhappy Yeomen. Choreography is drab and activity limp. When the show succeeds, it is through the rarely faltering cleverness of Bill Gilbert and Art Sullivan, who have never failed to provide enticing verbal and musical strands...
Best of all, however, is the marvelous set designed by Gino Lee, who has taken the drab setting of prison granite and turned it into a three-dimensional playhouse. Like a giant pop-up book, the Tower courtyard springs from the stage and folds out to provide interior scenes. Costumes are generally adequate and occasionally impressive, but snatches of synthetic fabric detract from the Elizabethan feel, and several chorus members seem garbed in get-ups on loan from neighboring centuries...
What does threaten to turn our gaze from the central action between host and hostess is the shining performance of Jane Loranger. Loranger plays Honey not merely as a drab, "slim-hipped" hanger onto Nick, but as a mostly-clueless waif with occasional but unspoken real glimmers of insight. She delivers lines like "Oh yes, [Nick] has a very firm body" deadpan, and "I don't want any children, I don't want any hurt" with a hysterical intensity that brings on the shivers...