Love that frisky title: DIDO OF IDAHO! The play by Abby Rosebrock, now onstage at APOLLINAIRE THEATRE, is a mad mash-up of myth and modern romance about a latter day “Dido” named Nora, in love with her wayward “Aeneas” Michael. The classic myth culminates in his betrayal and her suicide. Rosebrock’s dark comedy culminates in a jaw-dropping slugfest and a twisted trail to feminist introspection. Women rule as men presumably go their merry way.
The talented Parker Jennings as Nora is the alluring but sloppy drunk musicologist in love with a married English prof played by Mauro Canepa who’s charming enough to hide his assholery and keep two women on a string: the smitten Nora and Michael’s oblivious wife and former runner up Idaho beauty queen Crystal, played by Ashley Lyon with goofy abandon. Moreover, these characters defy stereotype which makes their accidental encounter exciting and interesting. Crystal is no dope and Nora is not as smart as her academic credentials might suggest. When Crystal stumbles upon Nora passed out on her couch, Nora makes up an elaborate story about being a victim of domestic violence, echoing the myth and foreshadowing second act insights about her own psychological and emotional history. As Nora embellishes her tale, Crystal races to her rescue like a trad wife in heat.
These performances kill as the actors hurtle through the action and the dialogue. Rosebrock serves up a brash and bawdy smorgasbord: chocolate chip cookies and vibrators, poems in prison and sex-stained pillows in a single act. Our lovesick musicologist staggers through the space, swooning to Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament ” moaning “Let it out Dido! Lament that shit!” Parker, never funnier, is a screwball beauty in 30’s screen queen Carole Lombard mode.
When these two women suddenly understand what’s going on between them and the two-faced man at their pivot point, that love triangle explodes– in a potentially promising new geometry. The proof is in ACT II– but it’s not air tight. Co-directors and dynamic duo Danielle Fauteux Jacques and Brooks Reeves, who mastered the hilarity and hijinks of Act I, do their best to smooth the way forward, but the fault… is not in our stars– or co-directors. I clung to emotional logic as the action moved from an urban condo to a mountain top cabin. The design shifts smoothly to accommodate both habitats. The tone did not.
There we encounter Nora’s closeted lesbian, evangelical choir director mother Julie and her lover, Ethel. Mariela Lopez-Ponce and Paola Ferrer are less than convincing in these roles which makes Act II harder to digest as we ride a wild tonal shift –almost off a cliff. While I admired Rosebrock’s swashbuckling approach, this intellectually rambunctious playwright hasn’t forged a believable path from sophisticated rom com to the interior, psychosexual landscape of self-help and healing. I struggled to believe and make sense of what I was seeing.
Nevertheless, the trip is worth taking, the key performances are knockout entertaining, and the ideas the playwright raises around the pesky old patriarchy and the damage we do to ourselves and each other in its wake are dramatically alive here. DIDO OF IDAHO– Rosebrock’s Nora– has not only left the dollhouse, but has left Aeneas beside the point.
See DIDO OF IDAHO at APOLLINAIRE THEATRE COMPANY through MAY 10!
