Fool for Love

This sly revival of Sam Shepard's one-act about melancholy American drifters has something in common with Shakespeare's R&J (see review above): A few actors are the wrong gender. Now and then, urban lesbians like to put on boots and pretend to be cowboys, and an all-female Shepard production gives the cast of UStickEm Productions -- a new troupe -- a perfect excuse. A rodeo rider named Eddie has driven hundreds of miles to hook up with his old girlfriend (and relative) May, but May is half-crazy and involved with another man; Eddie, too, has extracurricular entanglements. Haunting the motel room is the ghost of a mysterious drifter who proves to be an ancestor to them both. Shepard flirts with self-parody here, so casting the show with four women is the right idea, but most of the performances wander as much as the script does. M. Plonsey (no one at UStickEm reveals a first name) does her best work as Eddie only when Eddie isn't serious -- as when he gets drunk and starts to throw himself around on the floor. D.R. Adams may be too young to play a mean Old Man, and D. del Valle plays May's lover Martin as a funny but one-dimensional dumbbell. Only S. Taylor does a solid, sometimes wonderfully over-the-top job as May, losing her mind while only half-zipped into her cheap red dress.