Grendela (Alexandra Boroff) explains the virtue of sinning boldly to ‘Dame Joanne’ (Adrian Garcia) and squire Aquiline (Gilly Guire)
Writing a consequence-free boozer is never easy for me (being a teetotaler), but I took some solace in Grendela’s strong, thinly-disguised hypocrisy. Though she paints herself as a blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth rogue, she makes a clear distinction between highborn and lowborn men (a distinction that she, in an added layer of hypocrisy, pretends to find irrelevant). She is a manipulative bully toward those weaker than herself, yet falls apart and plays the victim as soon as anyone stands up to her (not unlike a certain presidential candidate).
And I suppose, like Sir Toby Belch, Dame Grendela’s bacchanalian lifestyle is not totally without consequence, but you’ll have to come watch the show to learn what those consequences are.
However, just like real people, the drunken hypocrite Dame Grendela still has some valuable things to say. In 2.1, she admonishes her depressed and uncertain squire to never regret being punished for fun and folly: most people endure the same punishments for sinning much more conservatively, “but we will do contrition For Our Sins, and Not the Pondering of them.” Much like Martin Luther (another inspiring hypocrite), Dame Grendela tells us to sin boldly.
COSTUMES by Delena Bradley
LIGHTING by Benjamin Dionysus
PHOTO by INDie Grant Productions, LLC