Playwright: Dorothy Marcic
At: Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green Street
Phone: ( 312 ) 327-2000; $39-$45
Runs through: open run
If The Vagina Monologues is a slumber party, and Menopause: The Musical, a sorority homecoming, Respect: A Musical Journey Of Women is a pep rally. It might be rooted in scholarly research, but in developing her thesis, Dorothy Marcic, like many amateur playwrights, appears to have followed the advice of Yogi Berra and taken every fork she saw in the road, making for a messy text redeemed by a kickass score guaranteed to have us too busy clapping along with 'I Will Survive' to notice.
Our narrator ( named for Dr. Dorothy, herself, but played by Karan Pappas channeling Bette Midler ) proposes a survey of women's images in America, from 1900 to the present day, as reflected in popular music. At first, she organizes her subjects chronologically, beginning with Lillie Langtry and 'Daisy, Daisy', but quickly shifts to arrangement-by-theme ( accounting for 'My Man' appearing in the segment on the 1950s and 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered', in the 1960s ) . And the photogenic icons displayed on the video screens share focus with those of Marcic's own family—a clan ostensibly encompassing EVERY significant trait of our designated historical period.
But who cares when we've got Jeanette Fitzpatrick, Sharyon Culberson and Emily Price belting non-stop nostalgia—not just the 'classics', but you-had-to-be-there trivia like 'Tall Paul'—backed by a combo with enough pop-rock muscle for a beach-party movie? When we've got Fitzpatrick explaining to text-message technobabes the quaint custom of 'waiting by the telephone', then plunging into a faux-melodramatic rendition of 'It Must Be Him'? When we've got Culberson segueing from 'God Bless The Child' to 'Ain't No Business' in the twinkling of a beat-change? When Price makes even the execrable 'Never Been To Me' into an anthem of independence?
If Respect has a fault, it's that its timeline stops circa mid-1980s ( young women buy tickets, too ) . On a Wednesday night, the audience was mostly female, but whatever your chromosome-count, if the notion of Barbie dolls robot-dancing while gleefully warbling a brassy double-time 'I Enjoy Being A Girl' makes you grin, this is the show for you.