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Examples? Okay. One cut on the band‘s latest release Chloe Liked Olivia makes a dig at George Bush‘s "kinder, gentler nation‘‘ rhetoric: ‘‘My will to change is going all limp As he plunges away, Don‘t you dare call him a wimp . . . And yet, the gay folkâ€"rockâ€"discoâ€"country band (which one reviewer has aptly and affectionately dubbed "‘the lesbian Beatles‘) delivers its inâ€"yourâ€" face message with a spoonful of sugar â€" humor. The allâ€"female quartet, which hails from Austin, Tex., doesn‘t pull any punches when it presents its radical view of sexuality and politics â€" or is that sexuality inpolitics â€" no wait, maybe its politics in sexuality. in the vfir;ét place, they are four in number. Secondly, they‘re fullyâ€"growed. And C, they‘re honest â€" the absolute opposite of "nice‘‘. Don‘t be fooled by the name â€" Two Nice Girls are anything but. By Deborah Crandall There‘s nothing nice about these girls And just the name of the song / Spent My Last Ten Dollars (On Birth Control and Beer), trom 1990‘s EP Like A Version, reveals the sense of humor of the band members Gretchen Phillips (guitars/vocals), Kathy Korniloff (guitars/vocals), Meg Hentges (bass/vocals), and Pam Barger (drums/vocals). ‘"‘Humor is way of saying something that could (Continued on page 16) Another cut, The Queer Song (sung to a Bo Diddley riff), pokes fun at the way some straights perceive gay life: I‘m gonna take you to queer bars I‘m gonna drive you in queer cars You‘re gonna meet all my queer friends Our queer, queer fun it never ends We‘re gonna have a happy life Both of us are gonna be the wite Maybe it‘s logical, Maybe I‘m stuck, But don‘t we all deserve more, Than a kinder and gentler 1*#! Vanities is not an elaborate production by any means There are only three characters, the set is simple. and the actors change costume on stage. Yet the characters themselves are quite complex. Throughout the action. Joanne resists any change in her life and remains completely inwardly focused, Mary changes to a frightening degree anc becomes extremely cold and Kathy, who is emotionally paralyzed, realizes she must accomplish something in her lifetime but does not know how to begin "It is so well written, the characters are so well written the hints about why they behave the way they do are just terrific The writing is really, really clever because they don t really say much about themselives,"‘ he adds. "It‘s how they refer to each other and their values and their activities that really tells us where they are and what they think Greenberg, who directed the first professional performance of the Vanities in Canada, says that it is easy to view Vamities as a piece of light entertainment because it is deceptively simple. "It‘s about privileged people whose families afford them the luxury of doing whatever they want and having to détermine values and principles for their own Wieag.. lives,"‘ says Joe! Greenberg, ># i 9 director of the production : ‘‘They don‘t have to work, they don‘t have to do a lot of se # 4 things which makes life for wal them ultimately much harder The boundaries or the limits h are not nearly as well defined aad as they are for most of us T Okay, so maybe it sounds _ Joe! Greenberg, director of like some deep, dark Vanities. psychoanalytical journey into the lives of our characters Mary, Kathy and Joanne, but believe it or not. the piay actually is a comedy. In fact, when Vanities was originally performed in the late 1970s, it became the longest running offâ€"Broadway comedy (C ontinued to page 16