A...My Name Will Always Be Alice

As presented by Oregon Cabaret Theater, A... My Name Will Always Be Alice earns an A-plus. A five-woman ensemble present more than two hours of on-point, sharp edged vignettes of civilization and its discontents, on the feminine side. The journey goes from childhood to old age, from the home to the office, from put-downs in kindergarten to send-ups in the art gallery. Together and individually the cast is excellent. The show, a themed musical revue about relationships, is laced with sketches and monologues; a mix of stops-out laughs and barely-contained tears. Most of the relationships concern men, usually men who have come and gone. Silver and Boyd have drawn carefully from a wide reserve of commentaries about, by and sensitive to women, even in pieces composed and written by men. Setting the theme is the opening musical number, "All Girl Band," which reprises as the finale, performed by the ensemble: Johnnetta Bowser, Ellen Lawson, Linda Otto, Karen Skrinde and Julia Watt. Then the show branches into the tree of modern life. Some of it is a jungle; some of it is roses and forget me-nots. Brightening one side is a comic sketch, "Trash," with Watt as a secretary reading romance novels, surreptitiously, on the job, and living out the fantasies.

On another side, Bowser stands out in a monologue from a woman who says that "attitude" is nothing; it's all in posture. Then, on a bus, she learns that others have postures of their own, from their own experience. Watt delivers a show-stopping monologue as a woman who registers in the bridal department of a store. She's not getting married, but she's tired of buying gifts for friends who are. She's going to give herself a shower to celebrate her singlehood. In the three short blackouts of "For Women Only," Lawson melo-dramatizes comic poems that are satires on women who blame all their troubles on men, as she portrays a bird, a plant and a dying swan. The health hazards of the one-night stand in the 1990s are poignantly dramatized and sung by Skrinde in "Once and Only Thing."

Touching a similar theme, in a touching way, Lawson and Watt sing two sides of a double-entendre duet, "At My Age," from the differing viewpoints of a woman, 52, suddenly on her own again, and an eager teenager, both awaiting the arrival of their respective blind dates. The ensemble performs a wild end to the first act, showing that girls like to have fun, as we watch the women watch a male strip show. All the facets are brought together into a single diamond at the end of the second act with the moving ensemble number, "Lifelines," in which the women sing, with pride, about the lace their experience has woven upon their faces. Melodies and lyrics sail along wonderfully on the music of an on stage trio (behind a screen), that goes from red hot to the blues, with many shades in between.

OCT performed A... My Name Is Alice in 1987; the 15-year-old company now exits the century with this outstanding sequel, plus another show to end the `90s: an original musical titled, appropriately, "Full Circle."