Sunday, May 07, 2000
Theater review
'Breast' portrays battle for survival
By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“I am a one-breasted, menopausal, Jewish, bisexual, lesbian mom,” announces the heroine of My Left Breast. “I am the topic of our times.”
My Left Breast won author Susan Miller off-Broadway's Obie Award and a slot in the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 1994. She's performing her solo show in a very short run at Ensemble Theatre with a final performance at 7 p.m. today.
Positioned as it is in the ETC season, you can't help noticing that the play makes an intriguing bookend to Wit. (The Pulitzer Prize winner about an analytic terminal cancer patient enjoyed a sell-out run at Playhouse in the Park earlier this season.)
In many ways, Wit was about a victim while My Left Breast is about a survivor, and not just of cancer.
Decked out in saddle shoes and thick white socks, khakis and what could pass for a high-end bowling shirt, this Susan is a survivor of life — of motherhood, a shattering romantic breakup, a career as an artist, and, yes, of misdiagnoses, surgery, chemotherapy and the aftermath of cancer.
That aftermath adds up to years of messy side effects of those life-saving drugs. One side effect: the loss of bone density and the regular pop, pop, pop of fractured ribs.
Our heroine is not complaining. Be thankful, she says, not just for life, but what life is, including phone calls from your kid at college that invariably start with the words “don't worry.” Be thankful when you hear yourself saying “we” and “our.”
Over the course of Susan Miller's slightly more than an hour monologue, you know you'd like to know her, have dinner with her, dish on the phone.
Her observations are always astute, usually wry and invite at least an inner smile of recognition. Some are laugh-out-loud funny.
She's courageous, opening up to an audience those oh-so tender parts that reach out for love then hurt so much when it ends.
She does a terrific imitation of an adolescent boy (son Jeremy), tells a wonderful story about a lifelong love affair between what sound like wonderful parents.
She knows a lot about hellos and even more about goodbyes, and darned if she doesn't have a cure for cancer — or anything else that ails you — that has everything to do with family, friends and community.
My Left Breast arrived with little fanfare. With a four-day run, there was no time for word-of-mouth, and the forecast promises the kind of weather that makes people disinclined to go indoors. Even so, it's time well spent and nicely priced at $15.
My Left Breast, 7 p.m. today, Ensemble Theatre, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. 421-3555.
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