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Theater Review: Sonnets from Suburbia
Spend an hour with San Diego’s self-appointed Laureate of Iambic Pentameter and Rhyme
Full disclosure: your humble correspondent has been known to bang out an occasional sonnet for the guest of honor at birthday parties. As party tricks go, it isn’t bad: the subject gets flattered and ribbed a bit, the crowd gets a little highbrow-goes-lowbrow diversion, and I get to hunker down in a corner and not socialize for half an hour or so. Everybody wins! I mention this because I suspect it makes me something of an ideal audience for Penny Peyser’s Sonnets from Suburbia, a solo act she is presenting at this year’s Fringe Festival. Not only because she gets the highbrow/lowbrow thing — at one point rhyming “thanks” and “Spanx” while adhering to the sonnet’s rigorous formal requirements — but because the whole show is about performance as protection.
Peyser takes the stage as Lady Penelope, San Diego’s self-appointed Laureate of Iambic Pentameter and Rhyme, clad in Elizabethan dress — one that she has never washed, lest it reveal its age and decrepitude and dissolve. She’s not much for washing herself, either — “pits and tits, as they say” — and this too is a prophylactic tactic, a natural enforcement of social distancing. She does expect you to tidy up, however: “Oh, welcome back from quarantine/ I trust you’re keeping your hands clean.”
At first, the frequent references to the Covid quarantine and subsequent rise of isolation culture made me suspect that the act was a lockdown project that Peyser was reluctant to relinquish lo these several years later. But it turns out that when the world withdrew, it was just catching up with Lady P, or rather, the unhappy woman hiding behind her persona. “She’s not all hearts and flowers; you may hear/ Some slings and arrows from this sonneteer.” She knows that a proper clown never sheds a tear, and she does her best to keep things upbeat —alternating her spoken verse with songs sung over a ukulele’s peppy twang — but then there are these phone calls to deal with…and her therapist has moved to Idaho. (Though that really shouldn’t be a problem, post-Zoom.)
So what begins as an entertainment becomes an engagement — though not for us, not at first. “You came to the theater, some of you of your own free will,” she marvels, explaining her refusal to demand audience participation. But as her armor cracks, so does her resolve; near the end, we asked what rhymes with “pathetic.” And yet, this shortish show is not a downer, in part because Lady P holds onto hope in the face of death and all the rest of it, and in part because besides the highbrow/lowbrow thing, Peyser gets the silly/serious thing as well.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Theater Review: Sonnets from Suburbia
Spend an hour with San Diego’s self-appointed Laureate of Iambic Pentameter and Rhyme
Theater Review: Sonnets from Suburbia
Spend an hour with San Diego’s self-appointed Laureate of Iambic Pentameter and Rhyme
Full disclosure: your humble correspondent has been known to bang out an occasional sonnet for the guest of honor at birthday parties. As party tricks go, it isn’t bad: the subject gets flattered and ribbed a bit, the crowd gets a little highbrow-goes-lowbrow diversion, and I get to hunker down in a corner and not socialize for half an hour or so. Everybody wins! I mention this because I suspect it makes me something of an ideal audience for Penny Peyser’s Sonnets from Suburbia, a solo act she is presenting at this year’s Fringe Festival. Not only because she gets the highbrow/lowbrow thing — at one point rhyming “thanks” and “Spanx” while adhering to the sonnet’s rigorous formal requirements — but because the whole show is about performance as protection.
Peyser takes the stage as Lady Penelope, San Diego’s self-appointed Laureate of Iambic Pentameter and Rhyme, clad in Elizabethan dress — one that she has never washed, lest it reveal its age and decrepitude and dissolve. She’s not much for washing herself, either — “pits and tits, as they say” — and this too is a prophylactic tactic, a natural enforcement of social distancing. She does expect you to tidy up, however: “Oh, welcome back from quarantine/ I trust you’re keeping your hands clean.”
At first, the frequent references to the Covid quarantine and subsequent rise of isolation culture made me suspect that the act was a lockdown project that Peyser was reluctant to relinquish lo these several years later. But it turns out that when the world withdrew, it was just catching up with Lady P, or rather, the unhappy woman hiding behind her persona. “She’s not all hearts and flowers; you may hear/ Some slings and arrows from this sonneteer.” She knows that a proper clown never sheds a tear, and she does her best to keep things upbeat —alternating her spoken verse with songs sung over a ukulele’s peppy twang — but then there are these phone calls to deal with…and her therapist has moved to Idaho. (Though that really shouldn’t be a problem, post-Zoom.)
So what begins as an entertainment becomes an engagement — though not for us, not at first. “You came to the theater, some of you of your own free will,” she marvels, explaining her refusal to demand audience participation. But as her armor cracks, so does her resolve; near the end, we asked what rhymes with “pathetic.” And yet, this shortish show is not a downer, in part because Lady P holds onto hope in the face of death and all the rest of it, and in part because besides the highbrow/lowbrow thing, Peyser gets the silly/serious thing as well.
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