Stage

The premise is played out elegantly in eight short movements. The droning Greek chorus is condensed to a few voices on tape, replayed in short bursts. A naked stage, underlit by votive candles and footlights, eliminates visual clutter. The Phaedra history is provided in the program; the show moves swiftly from there. Three-foot-high Barbie dolls puppet as Artemis and Aphrodite, interrupting the dialogue to bicker about fat-free diets and cheesecake. Yes, Barbie is a bit tired to use in this way, but her startlingly disproportionate dimensions once set some very real (or unreal) standards.

And anyway, this is a sideshow to the choreography. Dickinson, once a member of Twyla Tharp's company, is dancing as the audience enters. Accompanied by Stephen Kaufman's original and mournful compositions on the violin, she is the nurse, the slave who follows Phaedra to a new country. A counterpoint to boisterous Phaedra, the nurse does not have the luxury of mourning her fading beauty. The nurse's dance attacks the closed walls of the performance space as a chatty Woodhead, playing Phaedra, applies her makeup and discusses face lifts. Later, when Woodhead begins her final dance, a spinning tarantella praising the vigor of her womanhood, the nurse has crawled into her grave. Phaedra and the Nurse knows that not all women have the leisure to liberate themselves from the standards set by Vogue; but if they don't celebrate sagging breasts, who will?

-- Julie Chase