Let the Professionals Help

COURTESY PHOTO "The Oldest Profession" is playing at Foulds Theatre in the Lee County Alliance of the Arts Would you pay to see middle-aged and senior women play the naughty ghosts of dressed-down prostitutes?

In "The Oldest Profession", written by Paula Vogel, aged trollops with real world mouths make for some chuckles and pathos as produced by the Theater Conspiracy at the Foulds Theater of the Alliance for the Arts.

You are invited to enter the world of women struggling to stay alive and in the Life. The antagonists are corrupt cops and judges, competing madams, and the impotence of aged johns. The conflict is complicated with financial mismanagement by madams and power struggles within the brothel.

The conflicts are balanced by the powers of food, sisterly love, music and humor.

Much of the humor comes from observations on the economy where even quotes by Presidents Reagan and Carter are applied to whoredom (perish the thought). The themes will be relevant to many today, however, as they involve professional dangers common in the modern workplace.

For a small, low budget production the Theater Conspiracy manages to entertain. The set is minimal with all of the action occurring on a park bench or in a saloon that is on a wheeled side stage. It spins into view and into the spotlight when their time comes and you are treated to the musicianship of Bill Dawson, titled 2007's Florida Composer of the Year by the Florida Music Teachers Association.

What these women lack in youthful beauty they make up for in experience and you can learn something from them. However, you may wish you knew them better before they make for the roadhouse to eternity.

Vogel is an award-winning playwright who is skilled at taking the unseemly and uncomfortable making it affecting and funny. She won the Pulitzer for "How I Learned to Drive" in 1998, which play deals with subjects such as incest and pedofilia.

However, this is an earlier play where her characters sometimes lack development and some of the themes don't always play out well together.

The play is cut up with scenes from the afterlife, set in the saloon mentioned above, a jump back to the New Orleans of the madam's youth. In each number, the newly deceased get to sport some skin, a risque outfit and their singing talents.

All of the singers were good and I felt relieved for them because they had to wear heavy fur coats in the first act. I looked forward to the songs because I wanted to see which outfit came next but eventually also because the drama on stage was losing steam. I also wondered if the best singers died first.

I blamed it on some contrived sentimentality and later scenes where the surviving characters become more opaque as some themes of the play lose themselves with the drama.

Still, though perhaps not yet at full maturity, this is a great author at work with mature content. Also, the actresses are all clearly experienced and talented.

Expect F and S bombs, explicit details of paid encounters and some good laughs. n