What do you get when you drop the Greek god Dionysus in the middle of suburban New Jersey? What do you get when you mix the playboy-type character of Dionysus with an entirely femme-presenting cast and a lesbian heroine? You get the Kenyon College Dance, Drama and Film Club (KCDC)’s production of Hurricane Diane, which was performed Thursday and Saturday in the Hill Theater.
After playing music by solely female musicians, with an exception made for Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana,” the lights dimmed. The Universal Studios movie intro played and Elaine Preston ’25 appeared on stage, grumbling to the audience about the fact that no mortals were worshiping her anymore. Preston played the titular character Diane, a lesbian reincarnation of Dionysus, the Greek god of agriculture, wine and fertility. Over the course of a long soliloquy, she developed a plan of attack for the rehabilitation of her image: to seduce four New Jersey housewives to do her bidding. There was one caveat to the seduction — Diane could not touch or flirt with the housewives unless they initiated it. In a message to the Collegian, Preston discussed her acting choices: “For the play to work, I, as Diane, absolutely needed to have the audience charmed and on my side, and in order to do that, I had a lot of fun being larger-than-life, silly and confident.”
One of the strongest components of the production was the sheer talent of the cast. In particular, Dalia Fishman ’27 was brilliant as Beth Wann, a recent divorcee after being left by her husband. After her encounter with Diane, Fishman gave a heart-wrenching soliloquy in which she described a family custom wherein the bride and groom sleep separately the night before their wedding. She described how, after leaving the restaurant after their rehearsal dinner, she had extreme anxiety, which resulted in her screaming “a little” outside the restaurant, and her now-ex husband, Scott, giving her a look of disappointment. She then explains that, to get her to calm down, she was given beta blockers. Fishman perfectly embodied the pain of abandonment issues and feeling unloved. The raw display of emotion was moving and Beth’s grief and inner turmoil were brilliantly portrayed. This monologue was also Fishman’s last solo line onstage, which left the audience wishing Fishman’s Beth had been given more stage time.
Hurricane Diane is defined by its comedy, a fact that John Franz ’25’s Pam Annunziata highlighted. Another housewife, Pam is an Italian woman with survivalist plans and tendencies fit for the apocalypse. When Pam first meets Diane, there are two notable parts of their encounter: Pam could be convinced to have pawpaw trees in her garden, and she absolutely loves Delfini’s Deli. Pam asks Diane if she has ever patronized the business, and upon learning that she has, in fact, not, Pam cries: “You haven’t been to Delfini’s? What’s the matter with you, how long have you been in town and you haven’t been to Delfini’s?” Pam goes on to tell Diane the exact dish she should get at Delfini’s: “Diane I am not kidding you, you have to go to Delfini’s and you know what you get for your first time there is the polenta.” These lines require an exceptionally talented comedic actor to be able to deliver them with the gusto they deserve, and Franz was more than up to the task. In a message to the Collegian, Franz reflected on getting to play Pam: “I have never gotten the chance to leap outside my box and the team was so important toward achieving this goal.” His stage presence and general attitude made both his lines and reactions hysterical. His timing and physical comedy elevated the show to another level and was a standout performance.
The main flaw of an otherwise brilliant show was the ambiguity with regard to problematic sexual conquest. This is most on display in Diane’s efforts to seduce Pam. Pam’s panic button, which is installed in her house, is emblematic of her survivalist tendencies. During Diane’s seduction of her, Pam reaches for her panic button, to which Diane says: “Yes, press your panic button, I know it makes you feel better. I did take the precaution of disabling it earlier because I guessed that you might try and wriggle out of our date with destiny…”.
While it was obvious that the cast had spent a lot of time on intimacy coordination and trying to tackle problematic aspects, this scene was the only one where the script itself was simply a bit too much. While this scene was objectively necessary to the plot, it was a bit uncomfortable to watch. When asked about how the production managed the sometimes tricky areas regarding consent, director Sofiia Shyroka ’25 talked about the process of building a safe environment for intimacy in a message to the Collegian: “We worked hard to create an environment built on trust and openness, where everyone felt safe to share their ideas and interpretations of the play.”
One of the funniest scenes was when Pam, Renee (Yufan Lu ‘25) and Carol (Diya Chabria ‘25) discussed their respective sex lives. Renee is the editor of HGTV Magazine and the group makes fun of her for her “lesbian phase” in college, as she is now married to a man. Carol is a bored and unloved housewife who reads HGTV like the Bible. It all starts when Renee tells the group that she is considering pitching the concept of Diane to HGTV. Carol is vehemently against this. She remarks: “Your magazine is my greatest pleasure, Renee. Your magazine is my deepest comfort. What else is a person supposed to do at night if she can’t get into bed and open that glossy cover and gaze into those clean, immaculate landscapes…”. This hysterical tirade leads her to ask Renee and Pam how often they have sex with their husbands. Renee responds: “We try not to let it get less than once a week.” Pam and Carol are both shocked, but for different reasons. Pam proceeds to clarify the situation: “…me and Anthony do it once a day … every stinking day…After I drop off the kids in the morning…It’s to keep from, you know, hating his guts.”
KCDC’s second production of the semester was part of the senior thesis in drama for Shyroka, Preston and Chabria. Overall, it was a brilliant thought experiment on the trials and tribulations of a modern-day Dionysus that filled the Hill Theater with laughter.