For decades Carolyn Michel has brought women to light on national stages, but she’s been a special favorite shining the spotlight in Sarasota on individual women. We don’t have to take her word for the love she’s given to portraying some of them. The proof she brought onstage before a packed audience—many of whom have performed with her in larger cast plays—on the first night of SaraSolo 1016. In fushcia lounging gear, Michel became Ann Landers, answering letters mostly from women but also one of many memorable men. Coincidentally, mothers figure in letters from both women about their personal and interpersonal problems. As a mother herself, Ann eagerly talks by phone with her daughter. To the audience, she proclaims herself most proud of getting Congress to increase funds for cancer research. Before assuming each new identity, off to one side Michel changes her hair (wig after wig), clothes, and make-up, humming or singing lightly in a way appropriate to the character she was about to re-create. The one thing all have in common, Michel announces, is their use of humor both as a defense and an offense. For Dorothy Parker, Michel stuffs her bra and starts with the famous quote about women who wear glasses. (Dorothy didn’t, at least not during her remarks at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC.) She began telling lies, jokes, and bon mots early as a Jew in a Catholic school and, after expulsion, moved to a private one in New Jersey where she pawned off a false identity. It was some time before she got to write—and that was Goldwynisms in Hollywood. As a member of the Screen Writers Guild, she got into politics, and that wasn’t funny. Offering more on what Parker had to say and why would enhance Michel’s editing of the original script. With a gray wig and sweater over a worn skirt, Michel transforms herself into Rose sitting shiva. Rose asserts that she believes in hell and then proceeds to tell about the hell she lived through in Poland in a ghetto. No wonder, after WWII, she proudly “got out.” As blond Babs with bright red jacket over a hugging black dress, Michel talks to her dog and finds 1953 “a perfect time to go crazy and did it—trying to make lasagna.” It was both a religious and a psychiatric experience. Later she reverts mentally to childhood and settles at last with her mother. Poignant. During minutes intoning “As Time Goes By,” Michel puts on glasses and orangish red pants and top to become a retiree from the Post Office. Jokes on aging follow, along with details of how she moved to California and married Milton—but not before she found the two of them sexually compatible. Sex and feeling very much loved—how could that help but make both the Californian and Michel end a program so happily?
