Colette Uncensored
Zack Rogow and Lorri Holt
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| Lorri Holt as Colette |
The pupils dance in excitement across the surface of her
eyes. Her hands clasp in tiny balls,
grasp at unseen objects, and then fly in five directions at once. Lips move with well-formed purpose with a
slight quiver on the right side as her life story unfolds, and then they
suddenly freeze in pursed position as some memory passes silently deep inside
her. As the famed French writer simply
known worldwide as Colette (Sidione-Gabrielle Colette), Lorri Holt clearly is
having the time of her life reenacting a 1945 lecture in post-war Paris as she
talks about Colette’s life and the books that later spawned the beloved movies Cheri and Gigi. Based on recently
discovered writings of this prolific writer (author of over eighty works of
fiction, memoirs, plays, and articles), Colette
Uncensored (co-written by the performer and Zack Rogow) lays out in
delicious details for the Marsh audience the scandalous, liberating, and
ground-breaking adventures of this woman who left her mark for generations to
come during her 1873-1954 lifetime.
Three husbands, several women lovers, and a several-year
sexual romp with a stepson that began when he was sixteen are just some of the
exploits Colette outlines in her chatty, tell-all presentation. Giving us winks, looks of knowing, and flips
of her curled, red hair, we as audience are treated as her new best friends and
confidants. Proudly she tells us, “My
generation dedicated ourselves to freedom and relationships,” and then she
backs that claim with story after story of just how freely she lived in those
associations and alliances. “I became a
woman, a hungry beast ... wondering if pleasure is the same as happiness,” she
leans in to tell us. The soon-to-be-famed
character Claudine she put on paper, “I created my girl as a goddess in my own
image;” and as she describes herself, there is an palatable sense of
self-admiration and adoration but not of overbearing ego and self-import.
The joy of the telling comes not only in getting to know
this very French woman in her white-dotted, blue satin blouse and red-accented
scarf tied around her neck with a Parisian flair. It comes also from her giving voice and
stance to the people populating her verbal memoir – husbands, lovers, a revered
mother, and abandoned daughter. Often,
our Colette walks over to an unsuspecting audience member, transforms by
implication that person into herself, and then bathes with compliments or
berates with anger that Colette in the voice of one of her life’s actors.
A particularly numbing interchange occurs at one point
between a mid-aged Colette and her now-grown daughter, someone Colette has
evidently not seen in years after the daughter was sent off to boarding school
to be out of the way while her mother cavorted about the world of scandals and
society. As the daughter confronts her
“mother who couldn’t love,” we get to hear the hurt, loss, and cost on both
sides of what it took to be a liberated woman of the early twentieth
century. Over and again and especially
at that moment, earlier words of Colette come to bear: “The one who gives
advice is the one who needs it most.”
Lorri Holt is nothing short of spectacular in this
production directed with flair and feeling by David Ford. The insight and energy given to these
excerpts of Colette’s writings brings us as close as we could ever imagine
being to a woman who was honored in her lifetime with awards rarely given to
anyone her sex (e.g., a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and a grand officer
in the French Legion of Honour). Her
tour de force at The Marsh is one not to be missed for anyone who has ever
cuddled up to read one of the “Claudine” novels, watched yet again Gigi on late-night TV, or strolled the
streets of Paris wondering about those who preceded them down those
cobblestones in years long past.
Rating: 5 E
Colette Uncensored continues
through May 14, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 -p.m. and Saturdays at 5 p.m.at The
Marsh, San Francisco, main
stage, 1062 Valencia Street. Tickets are
available at http://themarsh.org or by calling 415-282-3055 Monday – Friday, 1 – 4 p.m.
Photo
Credit: David Allen
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