Small cast, big performance

Feb. 4-6, Viterbo's Theatre and Music Theatre Departments presented "Anton in Show Business," by Jane Marin, a contemporary comedy that takes a penetrating look into the American theatre industry today.

A cast of seven women performed onstage and off, with three of the actresses, Katie Bakalars, Cara Kluver, and Chelsea McManimon-Moe, playing numerous men's and women's roles. These three did an excellent job of imbuing pathos and strong personality in each of their various characters and caricatures.

Joann Oudekerk performed the role of Joby, a critic who served as a mouthpiece for the audience and the possible questions and reactions that might pop up during the performance. Anna Troy, Jennie Butler, and Samantha Pauly each performed the roles of actresses trapped in and coping with their choice of career, veering off in wildly different ways with their coping mechanisms. 

Pauly's Holly was a sharply played portrayal of Hollywood cynicism, as she aggressively used sexuality and power to validate herself and win the power struggle she's had to play in for years.

Troy and Butler, respectively playing the past-her-prime off-off-Broadway actress and the brand-new performer from Texas, were excellent at portraying their characters' struggles with the machine that the theatre can be, questioning where they fit in a business that claims to look for truth and talent, but in many cases deals with the realities of financial crisis and superficiality in casting. 

     Although the play was a superb comedy, one of the things that lingered long past the show was done was the sense of melancholy at the impersonal creature theatre can be.  The shallow trappings that can occur in an art form whose very purpose is to strip down these trappings make it all the more maddening when attempting to make art. Anton's hope is that the earnest search to make the truth of the human existence known through theatre is an admirable one, and one that hopefully wins out more often than not.