Word: mineola
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ever heard that America is divided between the right and the left, the culture and the counterculture? Just in case you haven’t, Paula Vogel’s “The Mineola Twins,” which runs in the Loeb Ex through Oct. 27, is happy to remind...
...Mineola Twins” consists of six scenes, one depicting each twin in three different Presidential administrations (Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush) as well as scattered dream sequences. The twins, Myra and Myrna, are polar opposites: Myra is the rebellious one, tending toward promiscuity, drugs, and radicalism, while Myrna prefers conformity and housewifery. They violently hate each other, but have a strong connection: not only are they played by the same actress, they also tend to share dreams and hear each others’ voices at moments of crisis...
Unfortunately, the double casting is one of the few interesting things about the play. Despite occasional moments of deeper meaning or true hilarity, “The Mineola Twins” largely hits period stereotypes. In its comedic moments, the show evokes chuckles rather than real laughs from Myra’s idolization of Beat poetry or Myrna’s inability to distinguish between distant figures in the newspapers, like Arthur Miller or Stalin...
...Eisenhower era scenes in “The Mineola Twins” are especially guilty of speechifying first and dealing with plot and character development second, and as a result the characters’ emotional shifts are at times confusingly erratic.Steinemann has the actors portray these transformations from casual chatting to nervous breakdown with mixed effects: Hecht does quite well with these extremes, especially as Myrna; as Jim, Havard is much stronger in quieter, more serious or desperate moments than at these points of excitement or panic...
This momentum mostly continues through the scenes of “The Mineola Twins” set during the Bush administration (presumably the first; the play was written in the 1990s). In these sections, the twins exchange roles; Myrna is now the political one as a conservative talk radio host while Myra lives a peaceful domestic life...