Female perspective funny in 'Alice'
By Mark Lowry/Star-Telegram Staff Writer • Tue, Mar. 23, 2004

Flower Mound Performing Arts Theatre has upgraded itself by signing a contract with Actor's Equity, the stage actor's union, to become a Small Professional Theatre. And to celebrate, it's giving a boisterous demonstration of girl power with A ... My Name is Alice.

Conceived by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd in 1984, and with lyrics and writing by too many people to list, Alice is a revue of musical numbers and comic scenes telling the female perspective on sex, education, sports, identity, friendship ... and more sex.

It's a fun little show, and on the group's tiny Barn Door Theatre stage, it often reaches top potential with the ensemble of Beth Albright, N. Wilson King, Stephanie Riggs, Cara Statham Serber and Amy Stevenson. Interestingly, it's directed by a man, Neale Whitmore.

At Sunday's matinee there was an incredibly clamorous audience, and for good reason. The cast was in superb form. Musical director Mark Mullino has achieved strong vocal work from the women, especially in the less frequent softer, more serious moments.

Highlights include Trash, in which Riggs is a show manufacturer receptionist who has romance novel dreams; Pretty Young Men, with Albright, Serber and King getting over their initial embarrassment at a male stripper bar; and Honeypot, where King is a blues singer who prefers metaphors of food and hardware when talking about sexual healing.

As much fun as it is, there are long stretches of over-the-top theatricality that threaten to destroy the overall performance. The performers get louder and crazier with each sketch, as if trying to top the preceding action. It becomes exhausting for us, and them.

The biggest misstep is Stevenson's three-time appearance as a woman reading her own poems For Women Only. This segment is written to be performed as a prim, but staunchly feminist, librarian type. When she reads certain lines, she becomes uncharacteristically out of control -- but then quickly returns to her proper self. Stevenson plays it as if she's one of the Grecian Urn women in The Music Man. Her poet is always loud and over-the-top, and the crazed bits come off more silly than meaningful.

Still, there's enough accomplished girl power here to offer something for everyone -- even the husbands in the audience.

'A ... My Name is Alice'

• Through April 3; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; at the Barn Door Theatre, 1800 Gerault Road, Flower Mound

• $15-$25

• (972) 724-2147