Marathon ‘33

By June Havoc

Strawdog Theatre Company    

http://www.strawdog.org

 

What ever happened to Dainty June?  As fans of the Broadway musical Gypsy know, Dainty June was the real-life child-star of the vaudeville stage who ran away from her mother, Mama Rose, and sister, the infamous Gypsy Rose Lee.  Written by June Havoc, the original Dainty June herself, Marathon ’33 partially answers this question. 

 

Marathon ’33, the first show of Strawdog Theatre’s  19^th season, is a semi-autobiographical telling of an experience June Havoc had after running away from her life in the vaudeville theater.  Dainty June, finding herself destitute as the era of vaudeville comes to an end, is coerced into entering a dance marathon with a $1500 grand-prize.

 

Dance marathons, reaching their apex of popularity during the Great Depression, were a vicious form of entertainment where couples would dance for weeks at a time, save for a 15-minute break every hour, all seeking a monetary grand prize.  Often run by the mob, these contests combined the viciousness of Coliseum-esque sports with the human spectacle of a freak show, coins being thrown out to the couples, the dancers scrambling to pick them up.

 

As the play is written, the character of Dainty June is a bit confusing.  She is seen going from someone very cynical towards the marathon and her partner, to someone that is nearly killing herself to win, without telling us exactly what happened in between for this change of mind.  Nonetheless, Kat McDonnell plays this role very convincingly.  The best performance of the play comes from Michael Daily, as June’s charismatic dance-partner Patsy. 

 

Unfortunately we learn very little about the other dancers, and this is the show’s main flaw.  Without the context and background of the other dance contestants, there is no way to really have any empathy towards them as they are eliminated, either by severe exhaustion or medical emergencies.  We simply don’t care. This can be mostly faulted by the play itself, but some of the failings can be placed on the director - these missing gaps could have been filled in a bit by ad-libs, especially in the opening sequence where each of the dancers is registering. 

 

Special mention needs to go out to the astounding make-up work which convincingly portrays the progression of the dancers from fresh-faced youth to bruised and blistered feet and deeply-recessed baggy eyes. 

 

This is a very daring and risky production.  First of all, it is huge.  With 40-plus performers, including a 6-piece orchestra (excellently music-directed by Don Cardiff), Marathon ’33 fills this small 72-seat theatre with ecstatic energy.  It is exciting to see so many exuberant actors working together on this show.  Marathon ’33 truly lives up to their company’s pronouncement as “The whole wide world in a little black box.”

 

Rating: Recommended (3stars)