THE MARRIAGE OF ALICE B. TOKLAS BY GERTRUDE STEIN *****
By Edward Einhorn
At the Jermyn Street theatre
The strangest beginning of any show yet seen. The two partners sit on a bench uttering the dialogue “I am Gertrude Stein pretending to be Alice B Toklas . I am Alice B Toklas pretending to be Gertrude Stein pretending to be Alice B Tokas pretending to be Gertrude Stein, pretending ….etc
They have decided to have a wedding to show to the world their extraordinary relationship Lesbian duos were not expected to have actual weddings in the early nineteen hundreds, but Gertrude despised the accepted rules and conventional {masculine} thinking.
To me, Gertrude Stein had always been a kind of mythical creature who wrote in an almost incomprehensible way – A rose is a rose is a rose (is pretending to be a rose?)
She had an absolute horror wpf what she called a paternalistic misogynistic language and tried to invent a whole new way of writing that would be purely female (without femininity)
She and Alice ran their Salon in Paris especially for what Gertrude considered Geniuses. The said Geniuses all brought their wives and mistresses and Alice entertained them in a different room, chattering at length about recipes and other household business. This silly, giggling gathering is exactly what men – and Gertrude – would think about female conversation.
After this comes a scene in another room – where the geniuses are. Here they all sit around in complete silence, thinking. – the privilege of Genius! This is difficult for Gertrude’s old friend Ernest Hemingway who joins in, trying terribly hard to think. Putting on every version of his thinking faces but Gertrude will never accept him as a genius. Hemingway, played by Mark Huckett is a big and butch and has no real interested in thinking. He is an action man. who writes about masculine subjects like Bull Fighting. His heroes are matadors. How could he possibly be a genius?.
The members of the Salon talk of many things when they actually get around to it. What makes a genius? Gertrude knows of course…and Hemingway isn’t. This brings us to realise that being a genius is often just a matter of publicity. only telling the public over and over again until they believe it. Of course so many of her Geniuses are famous, Picasso possibly the most famous of them. A female actress, Kelly Burke plays Picasso – and also pretends to be all the rest of the geniuses in the Salon – apart from the ones played by Mark Huckett who also portrays Leo, Gertude’s estranged brother.
Alice is portrayed by Alyssa Simon who conveys beauty and femininity . She was the other half of Gertude Stein whose fierce lesbianism is wonderfully portrayed by Nathasha Byrne.
The sole male actor is Huckett who is so funny as Hemingway, longing to be considered a genius but of course he is just too masculine.
This is an extraordinary, deliciously dotty play. It is intelligently funny portraying the personality of Gertrude, a woman not crazy, not even eccentric but incredibly sure of herself and her own ideas. A strong, intelligent [genius?]
I have not counted the number of characters in this play – all portrayed by the versatile Burke, Huckett and Simon. Gertrude remains stolidly herself throughout.
The play follows the whole length of the relationship until the publishing of the two famous autobiographies that made them world famous with Stein pretending to be Toklas and vice versa.
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