'TROLLOPE' SERVES MORE THAN A DOLLOP OF FUN

Nadine Goff For the State Journal

Mrs. Frances "Fanny" Trollope became a literary lion at the age of 52, when her first book, "Domestic Manners of the Americans," was published in 1832. Relished in her native England, the book, for a time, made Frances Trollope one of the best-known and most-reviled British authors in America.

In the 25 years following the publication of "Domestic Manners of the Americans," Fanny Trollope wrote 115 more volumes. Today, if she is remembered at all, it is usually as the mother of the great English novelist Anthony Trollope.

Joel Gersmann, artistic director of Broom Street Theater and a prolific playwright, believes "there was more to Fanny Trollope than being the mother of a genius." And so, he has made Fanny Trollope -- "a genuine original personality" -- the subject of his 110th Broom Street production, "That Trollope Woman." Gersmann, who seems to feel most everyone deserves to be caricatured, has taken note of the sound of his subject's unusual names and her sometimes wacky activities and crafted a comedy, not a somber biographical drama.

The play opens on the muddy Mississippi (ingeniously suggested through the use of brown paper grocery bags) and moves gradually upriver to Cincinnati, where Fanny Trollope and several members of her family lived for about three years before returning to England. Along the way, there are flashbacks to Fanny's earlier years in England, complete with glimpses of such contemporaries as Jane Austen.

Cincinnati was, at the time Frances Trollope arrived, a rapidly growing city with two daily newspapers and a Fine Arts Academy, but she saw an "uninteresting mass of buildings" and pigs running wild in the streets.

"Pigopolis" is the term used in "That Trollope Woman." So, yes, you'll hear a more than a few jokes on the subject. And you may, as I did, laugh the first few times but gradually become bored with the excessive use of "pork" as a four-letter word.

Frances Trollope engaged in some most unusual activities while she was in Cincinnati. She created several spectacles for the Western Museum, including "Infernal Regions," based on Dante's "Divine Comedy" and replete with terrifying images and gruesome sounds. She also built a bizarre building to house a shopping bazaar -- or as Gersmann's play tells us, the first shopping mall in America. Alas, while "Infernal Regions" was a tremendous success, the bazaar bombed.

Imagine all these events and adventures related in the inimitable, irreverent style that marks many Broom Street productions -- lots of movement, high energy and a plethora of often memorable images, mixed with inventive language (and at least a couple of jokes involving sex) -- and you'll begin to see a bit of the picture. Better yet, make the trip to Broom Street and enjoy this 95-minute slice of slightly fractured history, accented with cartwheels, vocals, lap steel guitar and autoharp.

You'll also see -- yet again -- some plastic phalluses, a prop Gersmann seems to have acquired by the gross.

The cast of "That Trollope Woman" is energetic, versatile and funny. Its members include Clare M. Sorman as Fanny Trollope; David Gapen as her son, Anthony Trollope; David's brother, Mark Gapen, as Anthony's brother, Thomas Adolphus Trollope; as well as John Gustafson, John Harmon, Bob Moccero, Raun Norby, Angy Gagliano and the animated Carmine "The Dog" Briganti, who, with help from Gustafson, plays a lapdog.

That woman up in the both -- Tech Goddess Jhen Harding -- deserves credit for the production's fine lighting design, as well as for serving as its light and sound engineer.

And last, but never least, Gersmann deserves thanks for introducing us to yet another interesting character as "part of an ongoing series about the origins of culture."

THEATER REVIEW

"That Trollope Woman" will be performed at 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through April 2 at Broom Street Theater, 1119 Williamson St. Tickets are $7 and available at the door only.

Call 244-8338.

LOAD-DATE: March 14, 2001