Parallel Live taps into women’s humor > Laughter the dramatic delight of Parallel Lives

For all the feminist la-ti-da-ing you get in the two-woman show “Parallel Lives,” which the Belfast Maskers opened over the weekend, you won’t walk away from this production feeling as if you’ve been bashed in the head by angry women. OK, there’s some anger in this nearly vaudevillian-style show. But the real triumph of “Parallel Lives” is the effect it will have on your stomach muscles. It is a show that taps into that all-too-rare category of women’s humor — and it does so with the unlikely combination of intelligence, compassion and sarcasm.

Written by the comedy team of Maureen Gaffney and Kathy Najimy (best known as the giggling nun in the film “Sister Act”), the play is based on their routine “The Kathy and Mo Show.” “Parallel Lives” became a word-of-mouth hit in New York City back in the late 1980s, won an Obie Award, and eventually was made into an HBO special.

Director Robert Hitt tried to revive the show earlier this year, but family matters interrupted the production. Then, after staging “Death of a Salesman” in the fall, it was direly time for laughs again. And laughter is the dramatic delight of this show, which never gets too preachy, never gets too sappy, never gets too unruly. The writing is reminiscent — but not plagiaristic — of “Laugh In,” “Saturday Night Live” (back in the good old days) and the one-woman shows by Lily Tomlin.

A series of vignettes about the vicissitudes of womanhood, “Parallel Lives” makes rapacious demands on the talents of two women actors, and Hitt has made the right choices in casting veteran Masker Andrea Itkin and winning newcomer Larraine E. Brown. Both women are limber performers — comfortable playing valley girls, Catholic girls, Jewish aunts, white trash and Shakespearian characters. And that doesn’t begin to give credit for the boisterously unattractive men they depict. (Which begs the question: Are there any good men in Kathy and Mo’s world?)

From the beginning of the show, in which the actors play heavenly beings overseeing post-Genesis development, a satirical edge takes over and keeps cutting its way through the issues of the play. Brown and Itkin take off depicting two Italian girls watching “West Side Story” and getting the brainstorm that it reminds them of “Romeo and Juliet” as well as their own adolescent lives; a womanist performance art spoof with lampooning lines such as “My placenta is your placenta and yours is mine”; two Catholic kids who skip out on Mass and torture each other with biblical malapropisms (such as the “Book of Elastics”). One of the most entertaining scenes comes early in the show and imagines how female menstrual cycles would be handled if they were a male phenomenon. (With machismo, that’s how.)

Itkin seems to have the most lines, including a totally successful and touching monologue in which a woman learns of her nephew’s homosexuality and refashions her love for him to include his gay lover. This show is, in general, one of Itkin’s best overall performances in recent history. She shows her stuff in this one, and although she can get overly sweet and cute at times, she covers so much impressive ground as a performer that there’s little else to do but enjoy her chutzpah.

Brown is the more accomplished comedian of the two, and her naturalness in the medium is seamless, her characters the most memorable. When she comes on stage as Hank, the whole-lotta-man cowboy, and keeps drunkenly drawling out the pickup line “You’re lookin’ vurry, vurry pretty tonight, darlin’, ” you’ll see the range of her enormous skill, which is both audacious and subtle.

Brian Ross’ set is filled with surprises. The simplicity and hilarity of his work add to the evening’s good time. As do Bobbie Applegates’s joking costume design and Kip Brundage’s bold-minded lighting.

During one performance over the weekend, Brown and Itkin were applauded back to stage three times to take their bows. And it’s true enough to say the accolades were well-deserved because these women are both individual talents and top-notch ensemble actors (who admiringly aid and abet each other onstage). Hitt also deserves credit for turning these women loose on this script, which will remind women of just how crazy the 20th century has been for them, but will also let men in on some of the jokes.

The Belfast Maskers will present “Parallel Lives” 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Dec. 14 at the Railroad Theater in Belfast. For information, call 338-9668.