Cast List (with nomination possibilities out of 10)
NY TIMES REVIEW EXCERPTS:Our Bellies, Ourselves: Eve Ensler Talks Fat By CHARLES ISHERWOOD: Ms. Ensler speaks to her mostly female audience not as a victor over negative thought patterns, but as a fellow victim of a culture saturated in imagery promoting trim thighs and a flat abdomen as universal ideals. Despite her bona fides as a leading proponent of a new-wave of feminism, Ms. Ensler found herself in a post-40 funk, engaged in an entrenched battle with her stomach. "It has become my tormentor, my most serious committed relationship," she says. "It has protruded through my clothes, my confidence and my ability to work." But the stylish production, directed by Peter Askin, can't obscure the fact that Ms. Ensler's new material is less compelling the "Vagina" testimonials. The show is rich in pointed, amusing details, but truly fresh insights are in short supply. This isn't entirely surprising. Self-help books and cultural manifestos have been decrying the country's emphasis on irrationally idealized body images and its pernicious influence on feminine self-esteem for decades. So have women's magazines. Where "Vagina Monologues" broke new ground, "The Good Body" sticks to well-trodden pathways. The proliferation of television shows depicting desperate self-improvement stunts ("The Swan," etc.) may attest to the continuing relevance of the issues Ms. Ensler raises, but it is disappointing that she fails to explore areas that might add new dimensions to the discussion. And perhaps she is a little guilty, as are those innumerable books and magazines, of helping to hype a pathology even as she offers her own form of therapy. For she does at last arrive at an affirmative conclusion, by looking to other cultures for models of a healthy rapport between the female body and mind. And yet I suspect that the insights gleaned from the 74-year-old Masai woman ("You've got to love your body, Eve") and a friendly Indian woman on a treadmill ("There is no joy in perfection") could have been collected closer to home. Like too much in "The Good Body," these exotically harvested snippets of wisdom have an off-the-rack flavor. After the searing, revelatory "Vagina Monologues," it's sad to report that Ms. Ensler's analysis of the complicated relationship between self-esteem and cellulite is itself little more than skin-deep.------------------------------- TONY AWARDS HAVEN OPINION: Ensler really is wonderful in this production, and most reviews were positive. She's automatically got a nod, but a win appears just out of reach. If she tours or extends, its quite possible that she wins the Tony.
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