Dallas Adult Entertainment: Review: Give It Up! at the Dallas Theater Center
More typically, Beane twits our expectations with quick little zingers. Topical one-liners like this (Tiger Woods? governor’s wives?) are an ancient tradition, too — a Broadway tradition. The puncturing often comes from Liz Mikel’s sardonic madame, the show’s comic centerpiece (her name, Hetairai, means concubine or courtesan). The role suits Mikel and her singing and comic talents so well, it’s practically a glittery, custom-made, form-fitting, Spandex catsuit, the show’s unforgettable sight gag. At different times, both the young women and the young men of Athens U. seek Hetairai’s hard-won advice about sexual warfare. (When the cheerleaders show up at the Eros Motor Lodge, Hetairai exclaims, “Damn. Two-for-one lesbian night, again.” )
Just when one is feeling awkward about this example of the black-woman-as-prostitute and the black-woman-as-font-of-Oprah-ish-wisdom, Mikel deadpans, “Oh, I just love solving me some white people’s problems.” This same basic comic technique gets applied to the well-spoken black player, the arrogant jock who, it turns out, can quote Walt Whitman and Emily Dickens — and so on.
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