Review of The Peacock at Jackalope Theatre Company

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called The Peacock. It was written by Calamity West and directed by Marti Lyons. It is about how this man, Calvin (Tim Martin) and this woman, Nan (AJ Ware), are angry at each other because they are both writers and they are in competition basically. One of them got to go first because she's the better writer and he got really angry about that. It is about power and how sometimes power can go from giant to small; sometimes you can be the best in the class but then people find out about something and people think you are bad. That happened to the main character, Nan. A woman is not less powerful than a man, but that is what some people think and in this play all the boys think that, except for the Professor (Ed Dzialo). This play is about how a woman writer overcomes her fears and gets back at the boys for trying to hurt her.

There was a scene that happened in a library. I thought it was cool how the set (by John Wilson)was bookshelves and tables and chalkboards. In this scene part of the set comes out of the wall to be a small bookshelf. I though that was really cool because it was kind of unexpected that they would pull out the wall and roll it over to another place. I found the scene in the library very interesting because in this scene every single one of the boys in the class came to talk to Nan. It is kind of like "Park Bench." Park Bench is an improv game where one person sits on a chair and then another person sits on another chair and they try to find a conversation and then they have to make up a reason that they have to leave. You learn that Nan is very strict and stubborn. Those are kind of good things to be, and here they are necessary things to be, and she is not always stern and stubborn. It is a good idea, especially when people are trying to be mean to you, to be stern. I didn't like how Henry (Nate Whelden) wasn't nice to Nan in the library. He just wanted her to like him and that is the only reason he wanted her to read Shakespeare's sonnets. If he actually were nice, he would have told her to read them because he liked them. The scene was supposed to show us that all the boys were jerks.

The closet scene was the most interesting scene but also the most inappropriate scene for me. It was inappropriate because they quoted Henry Miller, the most horribly inappropriate writer who ever lived on earth, at least that is my opinion based on one line from him that I heard. My mom did not know about this, I just want to tell you. I think this was the most interesting scene because they talked about a lot of stuff which I did not understand, which probably meant it was interesting. Just because I was a kid. I'm not saying nobody else will understand it. I understood that they were talking about Nan in a mean way. I think these men think that women are just things that you should just be in love with and that is the only reason they should be there. William (Andrew Swanson) left the second that Nan got into the room. That shows us that he was embarrassed that he used to be in love with Nan. I thought that that was kind of understandable; I might be embarrassed if my ex-girlfriend walked into the room and I had been talking about her rudely.

At the end Nan comes back to the class, after Calvin beats her up, with another story, called "The Peacock" instead of "The Peacock Story," which was a story by Calvin about a woman who killed herself. But we don't get to hear Nan's story. This is what I think it was: "Once upon a time there was a girl who was being very mistreated by these boys just because she was a girl and they didn't want her in their club. They had already hurt another woman but she wasn't going to let that happen to her." The other woman that they hurt was another girl in their class who had committed suicide. You know it was their fault because they don't really seem sorry that she had died. I liked it when Eugene (Jack Miggins) said, "You trust us, Nan, don't you?" Because it kind of showed that he was changing sides.

People who would like this show are people who like stories about writers and how writers live their lives. People should go see this show because it is feminist and that is something we need in our culture. We need to have no sexist people in the world.

Photos: Alex Hand