Word: priestess
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fellow worshipers formed a circle around them and chanted the ancient Hindu mantra "om," the bride and bridegroom watched the priest and priestess and their helpers conjure into their midst the gods and goddesses of the four elements-air, water, earth and fire...
Though the Beasleys had in fact been married earlier in a Roman Catholic church to please their parents, they wanted a handfasting, because for them it alone contained "the spiritual element," as the groom put it. A priest and priestess at the festival, Jim Alan and Selena Fox, members of a pagan commune near Madison, Wis., called the Church of Circle Wicca, did the honors...
...acting ranges from flashes of humor to painful awkwardness. Elizabeth McNary, as evil high priestess Slipreewenwhet, delivers some glorious Mae Westian asides. LeRoy W. Collins has a flair for outrageousness, but is miscast as the lecherous Pharoah, Seqentunun. Jim Tung, as Inkitin the scribe, Clare McGorrian as Eforeti the Queen, Mary Demerest as an anachronistic Brooklyn servant, and Michael Cohen as the thief Ali Katz, all have moments, but something doesn't gel. Cohen, especially, shows raw talent, but lacks experienced directorial guidance to help him bring his Peter Lorre persona off. Dede Schmeiser also shows potential as Rosetta Stone...
Some of the chintziness achieves its intended comic proportions. The evil priestess ties our heroes to stakes, threatening them with sacrifice to vicious alligators. But small, adorably wiggly plastic things are tossed out on stage, and for once Sellon doesn't ruin it for himself and us--the actors respond as though these are, indeed, vicious creatures. If this attitude had prevailed, Thebes Like Us might have been the enjoyably silly evening...
...high priestess in the realm of the irrational, Jayne Meadows Allen does a deadly parody of Louella Parsons, and Max Wright is a marvel of frustration as a writer with nothing to show for his work but a gilded cage. If one name must rank above the other 28 in the cast, it has to be that of John Lithgow, whose simple-souled George cements his reputation as an actor of formidable versatility...