REVIEW THE BUFFALO NEWS ‘Corsetless’ literally invokes Shakespeare’s passionate canon By Colin Dabkowski NEWS STAFF REVIEWER Updated: 12/10/07 6:51 AM On the gloomy set of “Corsetless” at the Irish Classical Theatre, a curled-up figure lies motionless on an institutional iron bed as wistful cello music wafts over the crowd. The lights dim. Slowly, the figure stirs. Dressed in a flowing white gown scrawled with excerpts from the works of William Shakespeare, the groggy figure, Olivia, murmurs a few bewildered lines. Then she sits straight up, searching her memory. “I dream’d a dream tonight. Prithee, listen well,” Olivia says in excited tones, quoting “Romeo and Juliet” in the first sentence and “Julius Caesar” in the second. “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was,” she continues, drawing on a famous speech from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” And so it goes through the course of Catherine Eaton’s singularly impressive and profoundly moving show, which debuted Saturday night. A little “King Lear” here, a wisely selected piece of “Titus Andronicus” there, all gloriously decoupaged into a narrative that speaks in Shakespearean terms of beauty, madness, repression and ultimately the irrepressible nature of the human spirit. Eaton’s show is a most rare vision indeed, full of raw passion, longing, tragic humor and unfiltered humanity. It centers around Olivia, a woman in solitary confinement in a mental hospital. She takes refuge in the language of Shakespeare, speaking only in lines lifted from his body of work. The walls of her room are papered with sheets ripped from his plays and sonnets, which she constantly references for inspiration in her conversations — sometimes with herself and sometimes with the disembodied voice of the doctor who committed her (Vincent O’Neill). Such an approach could easily have yielded easy solutions, wholesale copy-and-paste operations from mad Ophelia, for instance, but none of Eaton’s choices is easy. Their careful selection and arrangement reveals a deep familiarity and love for the canon that seems to sustain the playwright as much as her character. That Eaton has applied her mind to that canon is a gift that will reward endless viewings, much like Shakespeare’s plays themselves. This is to say nothing of the performance itself, which gives powerful glimpses into the thriving field of beautiful desperation that lies beneath Olivia’s linguistic permafrost. The set, by University at Buff alo professor Lynne Koscielniak, is stellar, as is an original score from Elaine Kwon, performed beautifully by cellist Nancy Baun. Fine lighting design from Brian Cavanagh, costumes from Susan Drozd and sound design from Tom Makar all rise to the level this play demands. The same goes for the fine direction of Derek Campbell. There are endless levels on which “Corsetless” can be appreciated, and it would be impossible to explore them all here. For different people, the play can speak equally well about the beauty and deception of language, the state of the mental health system, issues of artistic ownership, the effects of isolation on the psyche and sexuality, the nature of human spirit’s desire for freedom and so on. With “Corsetless,” Eaton acknowledges that language is a lie — even Shakespearean language. But with her touch, what a beautiful lie it is. Theater Review “ Corsetless” ★★★★ One- woman drama presented through Sunday in Andrews Theatre, 625 Main St. For more information, call 853- 4282. REVIEW ARTVOICE 'Corsetless' by Anthony Chase for TheaterWeek A tour de force performance would seem to be the whole point of Corsetless, and that is what this one-woman play, written and performed by Catherine Eaton, delivers. The play recycles lines from Shakespeare to fashion an original narrative, in which a woman is confined to a mental hospital because she refuses to use any other language. Eaton portrays the woman, conveniently named Olivia, who interacts with the pre-recorded voice of actor Vincent O’Neill as a doctor who has known her since childhood. There is a great history of performances of this kind. Actresses like Cornelia Otis Skinner and Vinette Carroll made their careers on them, fashioning material to showcase their talents in ways no other producer seemed willing to try. Eaton is a remarkably charismatic actress and a born leading lady. She navigates Shakespeare’s language with stylish ease and ekes delightfully unexpected moments of humor from some of his most famous lines by winging them in at unlikely moments. Much of the fun of this evening involves trying to place Shakespearean text recited outside its original context. A refresher on R&J, Lear and the first Henry IV may enhance your evening, but is not a prerequisite. The conceit is inventive and provides a fun variation on evenings of Shakespeare previously fashioned by actors like Bryan Bedford of Michael Redgrave, who recycled their great roles. Eaton takes on material she has yet to play, as well as some for which she would be ineligible. More than pose questions about the confining or defining nature of language, Corsetless seems to offer us some answers to questions about acting, and specifically about Eaton’s palpable talents. It certainly provides a literate evening of theater, and Eaton proves, once again, to be enjoyable company. ARTICLE THE BUFFALO NEWS Tell Me: Catherine Eaton A little Q&A Updated: 12/07/07 1:04 PM Catherine Eaton presents “Corsetless” starting Saturday. Actor CATHERINE EATON is the author of “Corsetless,” a one-woman show composed of a painstaking arrangement of Shakespearean wordplay. She will debut the play starting Saturday at the Irish Classical Theatre Company (625 Main St., 853-4282) before taking it to New York City next year. Eaton spoke to The News before her final weekend in ICTC’s “Moon for the Misbegotten.” How did the idea for “Corsetless” come about? I was in Los Angeles, and I had been there for just under a year. I was beginning a kind of budding film career and I had a manager lined up, I had this great film that was a potential [project] and all kinds of great things happening. Then I got a phone call, and my mom had fractured her ankle. So I went home to help her out, and I thought it would be for a very short period of time. About a year and half later, I was still there. I found myself still living at home and not having any opportunity to be an artist, to act. One night I came home, and I pulled out my “Complete Works” [of Shakespeare] ... and without even thinking of it, I started tearing out monologues, my favorite pieces from it. I think I just was really hungry to be surrounded by, or to remind myself of what I am or what I do. I really don’t remember consciously making a decision, I just remember tearing them out and starting to put them around me, around the house. And by the morning — I hadn’t gone to sleep — and the house was covered, covered with Shakespeare. [It was a] little bit of a breakdown. And that’s actually the set of “Corsetless” now. Who is Olivia, the main character in your play? It’s a woman who chooses to take on an acquired language as her means of telling the truth. And the reason she does this is ... we have come to the point where we take language to be the thing it is as opposed to a representation, and a beautiful representation of that thing, an autonomous item itself, but not the thing. In a sense, she’s taking on a veil so that people have to see the veil before they can see what’s behind it. That’s why she does it, and she explains that in the course of the play. Tell me about your production house, STIR. I used to throw old-fashion salons, like the Harlem Renaissance salons or the French salons where I would invite artists from a whole bunch of different disciplines. They became very popular, because I had a lot of friends in different artistic disciplines and I felt like one of the shortcomings of the entertainment world, the performance world, specifically, and also, actors, is that we tend to be very insular and work only with artists in our field. The hope is that by being exposed to these other genres, in these salons, that people will be inspired to do things that they haven’t had the opportunity to do before and that their artistry won’t be so insular. — Colin Dabkowski ARTICLE BUFFALO RISING Dec 6th, 7:27pm  By Reed Rankin "I am not bound to please thee with my answers." Shylock The Merchant of Venice The set of Catherine Eaton's original one-woman show Corsetless focuses on an austere, old-fashioned hospital bed in the center of the stage. Lengths of clothesline stretch upward at steep angles from points on the floor; hanging from these are loose pages torn from books, like nautical flags. What is this place? This is where Olivia lives, or rather is confined, in a fictional world defined by Shakespeare's pen but inspired by Eaton's own experience. After a year of hard work began to yield professional success in Los Angeles, Eaton's budding film career was interrupted by a phone call from her home in Vermont. "I got a call that my mother had fallen on the ice and broken her ankle in multiple places," she recalls. "My brother was married, and my sister was in college, so the natural choice for someone to go home and help her out would be me. I was perfectly happy to do that and assumed I'd be back in LA in a month or so. A year and a half later, I was still in Vermont." The classically trained actress, whose film and TV credits include Training Day, Sex and the City, and playing "The Sasha" in a campaign for Stolichnaya Vodka, Eaton became frustrated at her increasing distance from her craft. "I was taking care of her [mother's] school and I was working on a farm, and had no artistic exposure in that time. I'd lost my manager--very quickly, actually--she called and said, 'If you're not on the next flight, you're off the books', basically. Great business woman, though," Eaton laughs. The circumstances produced an unexpected inspiration. "So one night I came home from working on the farm all day, grubby, and I pulled out one of my Complete Works," she says, explaining that she has several different copies of Shakespeare's canon, "and started tearing it apart, pulling out the pages that had the pieces that I loved the most on them. I don't remember making the conscious decision to do it… I just did it. By morning the room was covered in papers…covered." She reflects on the episode for a moment, speculating that maybe she wanted to be surrounded by the things she loved- Shakespeare's words- or wanted to be reminded of the things she did, or that she just wanted to have those words at her disposal at that point in time, for a purpose she could not yet see clearly. Taking in the bizarre scene that morning, Eaton's mother was understandably concerned. More than one person has remarked that it sounds like the scene in A Beautiful Mind, in which John Nash's insanity is reinforced when we see the thousands of newspaper clippings painstakingly taped to the walls for some purpose known only to him. "Which it was not unlike, to be honest," says Eaton. "I did make connections between things that were very strange, and I was seeing themes, but they were genuine connections about themes and concepts, and I had a sense by that morning that there was a story in this. So I told my mother not to be concerned, went to the farm and worked the day." For the next two weeks Eaton worked days, then stayed up into the night tearing all those pieces apart into smaller and smaller fragments. She began to weave these threads into a new tapestry of Shakespearean themes that became the basis for the show: "Language, and whether it can really be a viable form of communication; destruction as a form of creation; when does creative ownership happen; the difference between an artist who originates something, and a collector who collects things and puts them together; madness; social constructs; the individual; love…all those ideas are in there, all the things that Shakespeare writes about," she explains. Over the following year, she developed the story of her central character into a complete script and enlisted friends and colleagues to help her revise and improve it. "So, it's come a long way since then," she says, acknowledging the contributions of others, "but the character, and her fight- the reason she's doing what she's doing--remain the same." Sitting in the Andrews Theatre an hour before her next rehearsal, Eaton outlines the plot, or as much as she's willing to divulge. Corsetless tells the story of Olivia, a woman confined to a psychiatric ward. She's been locked up there since the death of her grandfather, who was her sole caretaker. Olivia chooses to speak only in Shakespearean text. Her doctor, who has known her since childhood, had her committed. Olivia wages a linguistic battle against the doctor and the medical team she believes is holding her in isolation, arguing that it's her decision to take on this acquired language, that it's a reasonable choice, that it makes sense and it's her right to do so. "She's not doing anything that's insane," Eaton says, her passion for the character showing through. "And their argument is that she can't actually live a life this way in society; she can't step outside a social construct that far and still function within it. So that battle is the play. She uses Shakespeare's words to defend her reason for using them, and she also talks about love and lust and dreams. She makes jokes with the audience and sings and does a little puppet show. It's also very fun and playful; she's a very playful character." Eaton has an extensive theatrical resumé, having performed in dozens of theaters from Minneapolis to New York, from Bar Harbor to London. Why choose Buffalo for the world premiere of her play? "I did The Cobbler here in 2005 and had a wonderful experience," she says. After a reading of Corsetless at Lincoln Center this past spring, she had hoped to take it to an off Broadway opening, but took the advice of colleagues to mount an out-of-town production first. When ICTC founder Vincent O'Neill called her about playing Josie Hogan in Moon For The Misbegotten, which ran through December 2, she told him her desire to produce Corsetless out of town, and he offered the theatre to her for the couple of weeks after Moon's run. She was thrilled at the opportunity. "The Irish Classical Theatre Company has artistic integrity of a rare caliber," she says. "Every decision I've seen them make is for the right reason. And they've been incredibly generous and supportive." As if on cue, Producing Director Fortunato Pezzimenti enters the theatre as Eaton praises the company. He can't resist returning the admiration. "Catherine is a wonderful actress," he offers. "She brings such a presence and talent; she's really remarkable." Eaton's passion for Shakespeare's words is palpable. "I'm such a Shakespeare nerd," she laughs, holding up one hand, "card-carrying." Does the audience need to be steeped in Shakespeare to appreciate this show? "Not at all," she asserts. "If they are, they'll be rewarded, as there are many layers here, both in the original text and how it's used. But anyone can appreciate it." And although she has deconstructed the original texts and reassembled them for her purposes here, the work reflects her reverence for Shakespeare's language and her own creative brilliance. "Everything is footnoted, and I've maintained iambic pentameter. The piece is academically sound." Vincent O'Neill, who will voice the role of the doctor from offstage, says, "Buffalo audiences will have a unique opportunity to witness the birth of what doubtlessly will become a miniature masterpiece." Eaton genuinely loves and respects the Buffalo audience. "I can't imagine a better place to present a new work. The Buffalo audience is theatre-savvy, they have a ton of experience, and they're sensitive to theatre. I hope they come to this, because the whole point of the run is to have houses and see how the play flies." Eaton's production company, stir, plans an Off Broadway run in 2008, and she is working on a screenplay adaptation. "It's almost a mystery," she says. "During the course of the play you discover why she's there. A lot of possibilities are given to the audience as to why she's there, and then of course, there's how it all turns out. But you have to have to come and see it to find out." Corsetless, at the Irish Classical Theatre Company, Andrews Theatre, 625 Main St. Saturday, Dec 8 -- Sunday, Dec 16 Performances Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30PM, Sundays at 2PM General admission $20.00, group and student discounts available Box office 716.853.4282