Cassandra Speaks, the one woman show written in the mid 1990s for the actress Tod Randolph (above) by her friend Norman Plotkin about the journalist Dorothy Thompson, manages to accomplish a lot in one entertaining—indeed riveting—fell swoop, and in only about 90 minutes. Thompson, referred to in her time as the “First Lady of American Journalism,” was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America, after Eleanor Roosevelt, and was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934. Performed flawlessly by Randolph at Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theater, the actress skillfully conveys the near physical agony of knowing that you could make a difference in a world that is going to pieces around you… if only. As Randolph plays it, the Dexedrine-popping, orange-nibbling Thompson is simply hot—with anger about the complacency of the world regarding the rise of Nazism, which she rails against in detail to the audience (and, more importantly, in a column in the once liberal New York Post) and in the face of vexing interruptions such as constantly intruding secretaries, unwell friends, a soon-to-be fiancé, and the continued intrusiveness of the novelist Sinclair Lewis, the ex-husband for whom she feels equal part fondness and resentment, as much for how much mental space he takes up as for his alcohol driven self-destructiveness. And time is a wastin’. To understand much of the fury and frustration ably conveyed by Randolph, one has to understand how much complacency the historical character had to fight since first attempting to warn the world against National Socialism with her book I Saw Hitler in 1932. At the time, even people who should have know better, such as the great Fabian playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw, pooh-poohed warnings such as Thompson's in the 1930s, excusing Hitler’s well-known hatred of the Jews as merely “a bee in his bonnet” that he’d get over once he managed to bring Germany back from the economic brink. Viewers of the show, which runs through September 25, might find their memories jarred: the role to Thompson, and the conflicts of Cassandra Speaks, have been presented before— by no less than Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 George Stevens film Woman of the Year, as well as by the series of film stars (ranging from Lauren Bacall to Raquel Welch to Debbie Reynolds) who assumed the lead in the Comden and Green musical version of the same story in the 1980s. Entertaining as the film version was (it was Tracy and Hepuburn's first pairing, and she never looked more stunning), it was also patronizing; the movie trivialized Thompson's concerns because of the way screenwriters Ring Lardner, Jr. and Michael Kanin and director Stevens soft-pedaled her determination and activism in order to see her made into a “real” woman. What’s terrific about this Cassandra is that, while reminding us of the drive behind Hepburn’s performance it, also clarifies and competently corrects the record about its admirable real-life inspiration. -- Scott BaldingerCassandra Speaks by Norman Plotkin At Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre Starring Tod Randolph Directed by Nicole Ricciardi Now through September 2
