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By Kent Larsen
'Two Headed' in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- Mormon playwright Julie Jensen's "Two Headed" is
being performed in Hollywood's John Anson Ford Theatre through February
25th, giving Los Angeles audiences a chance to see the show, which has
previously been presented in Salt Lake City and New York. In yesterday's Los
Angeles Times, theater critic Michael Phillips reviewed the play, which
explores the effect of polygamy and the Mountain Meadows Massacre on the
lives of two women over 40 years.
The play's two characters, Hettie and Lavina, are just 10-years-old in the
first scene, which occurs just after the massacre. Each of the four
succeeding scenes is ten years later than the previous scene, and the play
shows the two women maturing, entering polygamous marriages, and struggling
to deal both with the massacre and with the difficulties of polygamous
families.
Phillips says "There's a coiled anger to Jensen's work," and adds that the
performance is "a thing of precision and short, sharp conversational
shocks." After pointing out that one of the actresses overdoes her part,
Phillips also has some criticism for the play, as written, which he says has
"too much of the savage truth-teller in Lavinia." He also adds that the way
Jensen points out the contrasts between her characters "awfully neatly and
clearly" robs the play and its story "of a layer of myster." But, Phillips
hastens to add, "Two Headed" has other things going for it.
Source:
A Journey Across 40 Years of Friendship
Los Angeles Times 23Jan01 A2
By Michael Phillips: Times Theater Critic
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