Expiration Date

One by one, three eccentric actresses strut onto the stage at La MaMa's First Floor Theater to wait to audition. They flaunt creatively outlandish costumes by Denise Greber and director Abla Khoury, with a common theme of bright red patent-leather shoes or boots. And waiting is about all they get to do, unless you count the impromptu monologues done for an ominous-looking camera on tripod that otherwise mostly spills artsy time sequences of the women onto a screen at the rear.

Eccentric Sara Galassini gives a knowing take on a speech from that most knowing play, Jean Genet's The Maids. Fussy Denise Greber in turn offers a stilted rendition of an equally stilted Margueurite Duras monologue, actually an incoherent rant to a soon-to-be ex-lover. Prissy Marjorie Jean has already regaled us as chanteuse. Each begins to accommodate the others' quirks, but the pressure of waiting tips the balance toward infighting. Galassini and Greber sport ponytails ripe for yanking, and it's all Jean can do to refrain.

Abla Khoury brings her experience in theater, film and dance to La MaMa in this mildly enigmatic piece. The theme is the riddle of the Middle East and the entire developing world-after the waiting what comes next?

Perhaps because this production's participants are weighted toward the feminine side, Expiration Date makes its points gently. But it's still open season on hypocrisy and deviousness among the three competing for a perhaps nonexistent part. Humor in the dialogue and action nearly masks the futility the actresses experience, presumably analogous to Khoury's view of life in her native Lebanon.

Without being overtly political, Khoury clearly exposes the nature of the inevitable disillusionment that afflicts society there. It's clear that a good deal of the fleshing out of the theme was done via improvisation, with mixed results in this production. The adaptations the characters have developed to cope with their own oddities don't always sustain interest.