MISS DIETRICH REGRETS
Director: Sylvaine Strike
CAST: Fiona Ramsay, Janna Ramos-Violante
SET AND LIGHTING: Dennis Hutchinson
VENUE: Sandton’s Auto and General Theatre on the Square
UNTIL: June 27
RATING: ****
She has the looks, the voice, the legs… and with Strike’s vision, she also has her throne. Ramsay slips seamlessly into the Marlene Dietrich persona as the bedridden icon who refuses to face the reality of her life yet is forced to face the isolation of old age even if it is her choice.
She cannot let go of the beauty she once was and would rather fade out alone than disappoint all those fans she knows are out there. Instead, she commands as she has always done, but this time the telephone is her lifeline and also the instrument that keeps the wolves from entering this holy terrain she has made her final castle.
With Ramos-Violante as the neglected daughter Maria, the battle between this mother-daughter duo is constantly poised to erupt as they tackle the past, present and the future. It’s not so much the verbal sallies that intrigue because they’re almost predictable, it is the tightrope between the two women – Ramsay’s delicate shift between diva and dotage with hands that claw-like grab the phone as she speaks to her chum Ronnie in the White House about Claus von Bulow whom, she insists, should be extradited to Germany for his crimes.
Dietrich was someone who always got her way. That’s what she expects and still knows will happen. But now she has an audience of one and it is that delicate balance between mother and daughter, a relationship which was never about normality but always about serving, that hangs in the balance.
While she is still expected to serve, Maria’s position is one of both anger and anguish as she watches and fears for her mother’s health and determination to go it alone. She knows she will be held responsible if things go wrong, but she has a family of her own and her mother the means to move to a place of care. But vanity reigns supreme for this movie star. Looks is what made her and gave her power and she will never be ready to relinquish any of that. She is, after all, Marlene Dietrich.
Strike has cleverly set the play on a movie set instead of an ageing woman’s bedroom because, as she says in her programme notes: “Marlene’s illusion was her definition to herself and to the world.” It also allows for theatricality not only of Dietrich, but the ambience.
With cabaret music wafting in and out, Maria tries to pull her mother into the real world while hanging out mostly on the periphery of her life. As the one who probably knows her mother best, she is too familiar with the illusion and understands that this is another fight she will lose.
It is about a mother who loves her daughter in the only way she knows how, a daughter who desperately seeks the acknowledgement she craves but will never find, a mother who knows she’s on her way out but will do it her way, and finally a daughter who has to let her mother go –one last time.
Ramsay captures the hauteur and hubris of a woman who always ruled in her world magnificently. She gives her character all the grandeur of that era while nuancing her performance with a quiet desperation that filters through underneath. Ramos-Violante presents a daughter in misery because of who her mother is, but also someone who understands the tragedy of letting go of a woman who ruled her life.