Review excerpts
Reviews for Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart
Edmonton Sun
25th August 2006
Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart , Stage 4. Here's a great show for the inner perfect housewife lurking inside every single adult female whether she admits it or not. Lindsay Burns takes several healthy whacks at the jailed maven of style in what turns out to be a delicious, thought-provoking slice of post-feminist ideology. Mmm, ideology. It's a good thing.
5 Suns out of 5.
Edmonton Journal
by Liz Nichols
25th August 2006
A surprising satire. This isn't as easy as it sounds. You'll be amazed by the evil ripple effect of Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart, which starts with an easy target and has large cultural implications. Not that Lindsay Burns's killer script is crude enough to explain.
Now You're Cooking- Edmonton Sun
Dough rises to the occaision
5 Suns out of 5
By Mike Ross
Edmonton Sun, 23rd Aug 2006
It's become so easy to make jokes about Martha Stewart that even Jay Leno is tired of it, but you have to admit she makes a chocolate hazelnut torte to die for.
Like it or not, admit it or not, hate her or love her, Martha Stewart has had a profound effect on life in North America. She is a post-feminist icon, the manifestation of every woman's inner perfect housewife.
Sure, many will snicker, "Who has time to knit doilies for hand-glazed ceramic cat food bowls?" but who among us hasn't secretly wished we could cook a scrumtious butternut squash risotto served on an oaken table festooned with linen napkins folded in the shape of Al Gore's head?
Well, anyway, women ought to dig this show.
Playwright and performer Lindsay Burns doesn't shy away from poking fun at the maven of style. The first scene of Dough shows Martha planning an elaborate party on a farm.
No detail is overlooked, from the serving of the main course of roast chicken with a side of lightly roasted root vegetables to the fresh peach crumble to the quaint red-checkered tablecloth with the wildflower centerpiece to the after dinner entertainment provided by a farm hand until "we remember that we don't like country music" and then a performance from a band that opened for U2.
Then she tells her daughter, "Please let me give you the greatest eighth birthday party ever."
From mirth to p[olitics, as the title promises, another scene airs the theory that Martha went to jail not for lying baout stocks, but because George W. Bush wanted to send a message to Hillary not to run in 2008.
In addition to MArtha, her own bad self, Burns expertly channels a variety of women from all ages, accents and walks of life- each having fallen under the spell of superlative style.
A tearful woman celebrates the end of 11 years of home renovations. A posse of GILFs -G stands for grandmother, I own't spell out the rest- cuts loose in Banff. A housewife celebrates her divorce by serving devil's food cake, another of Martha's delicious and empowering recipes. Yum.
Only one thing to add to this review of Dough - and you had to see this coming - it's a good thing.
FFWD, Edmonton Fringe Report
24th August 2006
Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart Pot of Jam Productions,(Calgary).
Its Edmonton production marks the third of Lindsay Burns' one-woman shows, after runs in both Theatre Junction's Random Acts Festival and Ground Zero Theatre's Groundbreakers series. This season, Dough will run as part of Ground Zero's regular season, bringing the total number of productions to four. Judging from its Fringe incarnation, a piece of production as slick and well marketed as any mainstage show (or home and garden phenonenon), it's not difficult to see why the show has been such a success.p>
From maternal excess to a bittersweet story of divorce and sentimentality, Dough is no mere satire, but a full-flavoured recipe mixed from nine monologues and a single powerful performer.
See Magazine Edmonton
21th August 2006
Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart , Stage 4. A series of nine vignettes, their titles (all related to baking) exhibited Vaudeville-style on an easel. Written and presented by a single performer, Lindsay Burns, the stories explore the ways we attempt to better ourselves or those around us. Dealing with typically influential cultural ideals (such as pressure to have the perfect house, and the ways in which people - especially women- are expected to behave), this is an enjoyably intelligent and funny exploration of society's assumptions and behaviours. Don't be discouraged by the subtitle; there's plenty of material for people (like me) who don't know or care about Martha Stewart, delivered by an engaging and super-confident performer who knows what she's talking about. The men in the audience seemed to enjoy it as well, and I appreciated the celebration of a sexy older woman, strong and unapologetic. Burns is excellent when she explodes myths of maternity and other roles that are stereotyped, but of course more complex than our superficial media-based culture considers. And make sure you put your hand up at the end.
FFWD THEATRE
by MELANIE LITTLE
Searching for Martha Stewart
Lindsay Burns finds pathos and humour in the domestic diva
Ground Zero Theatre and FireBelly TheatreWritten by Lindsay Burns
Runs until March 4
Pumphouse Theatres
On October 22, 2004, Alexis Stewart appeared on Larry King Live to announce that prison food is, as suspected, "terrible" and that, nevertheless, her mother Martha was doing just fine, working out in "a nice gym with a Stairmaster" and getting up earlier than everyone else. The number of posts the segment generated on message boards across America ("How could we allow such a beautiful woman to suffer this humiliation?" "Yes, it was a witch hunt - and they caught one!" "We REAP what we SOW") was likely greater than the number of theatre tickets sold, that same night, around the world.
It's all too easy to disdain the complex stew of anxious dreams and excited envy forever bubbling around the phenomenon that is Martha Stewart. But such a reaction also, by extension, dismisses the millions of people, a great many of them women, to whom Stewart is either a domestic diva or a demon or, quite simply, "a good thing."
Fortunately, Calgary actor/writer Lindsay Burns's current one-woman show, Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart, chooses to dig deeper rather than dismiss. This is not a play "about" Martha Stewart: instead, it uses Her Martha-ness as a binding agent in an examination of how and why contemporary women still find themselves under the spells of damaging archetypes of female perfection. By taking a cubist approach, exploring the stories of nine different women struggling with "lives of quiet and not-so-quiet desperation," Dough paints a disturbing composite portrait of a culture driven by the terror of being unremarkable. Even at their most decadent - picking up boy-toys in Banff, obsessed with finding "the right shade of sea foam" for the bathroom off the kitchen, barking orders for an eighth-birthday party straight out of Martha Stewart Living itself ("It should feel wholesome and remind us to use the farmers market more often") - these women are tiny and terrified, seemingly convinced they're clinging to the sheer face of a cliff by nothing more than their expensive manicures and their wits.
Without a single costume change outside a few simple props, Burns creates nine women entirely distinct from one another. One spins Bush-versus-Hillary-via-Martha conspiracy theories through a Joan Rivers accent and a bottle of champagne; one mousily gears up for a striptease she's been perfecting in an Adult Education course, gushing at audience members as if we're her classmates ("I am so glad the bent-willow birdfeeder class was full!"); one cold-bloodedly threatens to jump off a building to garner attention for her daughter's album ("If I don't do this, they won't even want her on The Surreal Life"). Subtle nuances and unexpected reversals in the writing prevent these characters from being mere caricatures. Still, in the hands of a lesser performer, Dough might be a much lesser play. Burns's physical, vocal and facial expressiveness do more to create discrete stories than nine separate top-dollar locations could. Take that, TV!
The intimacy of the Pumphouse's Joyce Doolittle Theatre is perfect for this production. It's staged in the round (or rather, the oval), highlighting the point that Burns's women are perpetually on display. Colin Ross's set design is simple and effective: a central, three-tiered dais evokes a wedding cake but, more importantly, gives Burns a world of room to move in a tiny space. A nice touch, too, is a set of breezy white curtains surrounding the audience, cloistering us with the performer and creating a feeling of privacy and shared secrets.
Each of Dough's nine segments is introduced by an ingredient or element, printed on oversized, coolly retro placemats - of the bread-making process, from "water" through "punch down" (my favourite) to, finally, "bake." Having once suffered through a 20-minute performance-piece in which a kerchiefed actor did nothing but knead air, I'm happy to say the breadmaking here is almost entirely symbolic. It's an apt metaphor, though, for a play whose humour, like bread, is both delicious (the 90 minutes speed by) and substantial (days later, I'm still thinking about it). And although cupcakes do figure (rather nicely, actually) in the action, Dough is moving without being saccharine.
"There is nothing more unattractive than a crying woman," one character's grandmother used to say, while another puts forth the theory that Martha was crucified by the courts because she refused to cry. Stoicism, it seems, can be just another coat of polish on those clinging claws. But if Burns's artistic choices here are anything to go by, her own recipe for resistance seems to be much heavier on the dark laughter than the tears. And, yes (come on, you knew this was coming): it is indeed a good thing.
Martha cooks up a winner
Jennifer Partridge, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, February 25, 2006
Nobody does details like Martha Stewart. When it comes to fashioning the perfect gingerbread house based on antique architectural blueprints, she's your gal. Ditto for delicately handcrafting a to-die-for cranberry wreath or creating the kind of melt-in-your-mouth decadent brownies lesser bakers can only salivate over.
Oh, and don't forget about her ability of remaining stoically -- some would say stubbornly -- dry-eyed in the face of the ImClone stock trading scandal which ultimately saw Martha decorating the Big House -- and we're not talking her Turkey Hill mansion -- for five months in the latter part of 2004.
Ah, Martha. Domestic diva extraordinaire. Arbiter of exquisite taste. A woman who, much to the bitter resentment of those of us who can't function without at least eight hours in the sack, requires a mere four hours of sleep a night.
Is it any wonder, then, that we love to hate her? Or that popular Calgary actor Lindsay Burns has chosen to take on this icon in her new one-woman show, Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart?
Not in the least.
Nor should it come as any surprise that Burns pulls it off with the sort of graceful panache Martha herself would applaud.
Burns, who celebrated the opening night of Dough Thursday in the intimate setting of the Pumphouse Theatre, doesn't do it by getting inside the head of Martha Stewart, either. Rather, she has wisely chosen to focus on the lives of nine women: everyday, ordinary stay-at-home mothers, housewives leading lives of quiet desperation, stressed-out corporate types and at least one slightly inebriated conspiracy theorist.
Again, not surprisingly, these are all women to whom the audience can relate: they are our mothers, our sisters, our grandmothers, our nieces, our girlfriends. Women who all have at least one thing in common -- a passionate affinity for -- or decidedly against -- Martha Stewart.
And whether it's the Martha clone stridently planning the ultimate birthday party, complete with a rustic country setting, enough food to feed a small nation and dusk-till-dawn dancing, for her eight-year-old daughter or the newly divorced mother of two watching her duplicitous ex reaching for his fourth Martha Stewart-inspired chocolate cupcake (note: the dog excrement so carefully mixed into the batter was most definitely not Martha's doing), the divine Ms. M is a fundamental element underscoring these women's lives.
Can we relate to these poignant, hilarious, at-times ugly vignettes so superbly presented by Burns? You better believe it, sister.
Therein lies the beauty of this play. It is through these semi-private moments, demarcated by nine different components in the art of breadmaking, that Burns skillfully manages to cut through the deceptively golden crust of domestic perfection to reveal the raw ingredients inside the lives of these nine women.
Bubbling over with perceptive insight and saucy humour, Burns' one-woman tour-de-force is one of those can't-miss shows.
Dough doesn't always perform the way it's supposed to. But in this instance, Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart more than rises to the occasion.