Word: lola
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There are only five characters, all women, all mothers or daughters or both: MaDear (Raffini), the not-so-senile great-grandmother who provides some of the funniest lines of the play, despite continual rantings about the "man," her decesased husband and the past; Lola (Valerie Stephens), the grandmother, preoccupied with the many men in her life; Maydee (Diane Beckett) the mother, a middle-class academic waiting for a tenure offer; Maydee's daughter Vennie (Valerie Stephens), who has just dropped out of college and wants to be a singer; and Raisa (Ethelyn Friend), Vennie's white "best friend," who plays...
Some of their tension lies in differences of class; Maydee constantly corrects her daughter on her use of double negatives, and uses words which Lola complains she does not understand. When she says that Maydee is "teaching Black people how to be Black," Maydee coldly responds that she teaches Afro-American Studies and Political Science...
...large part of the generational tension lies in reactions to sex and sexuality. Maydee claims that she does not want or need a man, deriding Lola for always running after a "gigolo." Lola, never afraid to speak her mind, answers scornfully to Maydee that "a blanket's cuddly if you wrap it the right way." But the humor of their words cannot be contained in any of the many one-liners, but in the whole, in the interaction of all five players on stage...
Leading slut is more like it. For The Blue Angel is the tragic (if now faintly risible) story of the sadomasochistic relationship between a nightclub singer and a middle-aged high school teacher who becomes obsessed with her. The callousness of Lola-Lola's manipulations was memorable, but not more so than the soon-to-be-famous legs that walked all over her victim. Von Sternberg returned triumphantly to Hollywood, and Dietrich followed...
Describing Risky Choice: Aspiration andConflict--by Lola Lopes, professor, Universityof lowa, Pierce Hall, Room 209, 4 p.m.Tuesday, 17 March