Photo by Matthew McCray

Margaret Gray – LA Times

Son of Semele Ensemble has selected two startlingly different short plays for “Woman Parts,” a double bill planned, according to the program, as a corrective to the underrepresentation of women in the theater.

The first offering, “Sex & God,” by the Scottish playwright Linda McLean, weaves together melancholy monologues by four women from different periods of the 20th century: in 1905 (Betsy Moore), 1935 (Melina Bielefelt), 1965 (Sarah Rosenberg) and 1995 (Hilletje Bashew). These women tell their stories in alternating, impressionistic fragments (in dialects coached by Ruth Connell) that evoke four instruments in counterpoint.

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

It’s hard to imagine two more dissimilar plays than Linda McLean’s Sex and God and Sibyl O’Malley’s Lamentations of the Pelvis, which together make up a feminist themed double-header at Son of Semele Ensemble. Written and directed by women, they share a female focus but are otherwise as stylistically different as any two works can be.

Now running through May 19.

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