CHEAT
At the Women’s Project Theatre, 424 W. 55th St. Through Nov. 3. TeleCharge, (212) 239-6200.
—–
AS Julie Jensen’s new play, “Cheat,” would have it, Rosie the Riveter – the iconic image of the woman factory worker from World War II – was a lesbian.
Unfortunately, much like “Burning Blue,” which treats male love in the naval air corps, “Cheat” is a heavy-breathing melodrama that makes little sense.
For Rosie, read Roxy, a fierce young woman who enjoys wearing factory clothes. In the factory she has many a cuddle with blonde Reva, a smarter, older woman with a cynical attitude. The two have icky fantasies where they pretend to be in Paris or Algiers.
But Roxy has a home life as well. She is married to the spectacularly stupid D-Dubb, who runs a gas station and cooks casseroles and tells endless knock-knock jokes and thinks a Panzer is a dog. (I’m not making this up!)
Roxy irons and makes sour faces and won’t have any casserole. Something tells us this marriage is doomed.
Roxy is also pregnant – in a complicated subplot that involves Reva’s son, who is in the Battle of the Bulge. Don’t ask.
The stage, dominated by the projected figure of a woman riveter, is clumsily used by director Joan Vail Thorne.
The one performance of any spunk or humor is that of Shayna Ferm as a affably ditsy fellow worker of the central pair. Lucy Deakins stresses the humorless grimness of Roxy, and Karen Young is almost as solemn in the role of the older woman. Kevin O’Rourke is convincingly dense as D-Dubb.
Playwright Jensen ought to research her material more thoroughly: Bodies were not shipped home from Europe for burial in the middle of the war, and the “German Foreign Minister” did not announce the Nazi surrender.
But mistakes in history are the least of the problems with “Cheat,” which never comes alive because it is so dully imagined.