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 Mary (Anne Gottlieb, left) and Crystal (Georgia Lyman) prepare for a showdown in a scene from the SpeakEasy Stage Company Production of “The Women.” (Photo courtesy of Mike Lovett) |
By IRIS FANGER
For The Patriot Ledger
When Clare Boothe Luce’s play ‘‘The Women’’ opened on Broadway
in 1936, the intertwined subjects of infidelity, female dependency in a
man’s world and the uncertain nature of the friendships between women
made for novel revelation under the bright lights of the stage, to
assure the show of setting attendance records for a non-musical.
However, reviving ‘‘The Women’’ for contemporary viewers who have
watched countless episodes of ‘‘Sex In The City’’ and ‘‘Desperate
Housewives’’ is tricky business, especially in finding an appropriate
tone for attitudes forged by the difference in society’s ethics.
Speakeasy Stage Company has opened its 16th season with an impressive
revival of the Booth work, although sometimes it’s hard to discern the
nature of the action on stage. To be sure, it’s comic, with Booth’s
quips combining an audacity and element of surprise that still seems
current. Nancy, the unmarried writer, calls herself ‘‘ a virgin - a
frozen asset,’’ then adds on leaving a scene, ‘‘No one ever misses a
clever woman.’’ Later on comes one of the most often quoted lines of
the play that sums up the plot, ‘‘There’s nothing like another woman to
make a man appreciate his wife.’’ However, the plot turns and
extravagant characters, as directed by Scott Edmiston, sometimes border
on caricature and the production comes perilously close to kidding the
material by the second act.
The setting is Park Avenue, New York, where the indolent wives of rich
husbands spend their days at bridge games and gossip, spreading secrets
to ruin another’s illusions with utmost glee. The main plot-line
concerns the happily married Mary Haines, who discovers that her
husband, Steven, is keeping a mistress, Crystal Allen, a gold-digger
who has tangled him in her clutches. Mary’s friends, the cynical Sylvia
Fowler, the ever-pregnant Edith Potter, and the innocent young bride
Peggy Day, alternately console her and gloat at her fate. By Act II,
however, there are enough plot reversals to send the pack of them off
to Reno for multiple divorces. An upstairs-downstairs contrast is
established with scenes between the members of the household staff
commenting on their employers, and characters like the snoopy
manicurist at the beauty salon du jour.
The gimmick is the all-female ensemble, talking about little else than
their men who never appear on stage. Edmiston has framed the show in
narration, with Nancy sitting at a typewriter at the side of the stage
to recite Luce’s revealing stage directions and descriptions of the
various characters. He’s also added an Act I finale for the entire
cast, posed on stage, to sing Cole Porter’s languid ballad, ‘‘Down in
the Depths (on the 90th floor)’’ about the lonely lives of the women
who live perched high above Park Avenue.
In the Speakeasy production, 20 fine local actresses take on the 40
different roles with varying degrees of glee and abandon, particularly
Maureen Keiller as the venal Sylvia, Mary Klug as the slightly-dotty,
much married and divorced Countess, and the stunning Georgia Lyman as
Crystal, the other woman. Anne Gottlieb portrays Mary with dignity and
a quiet pathos, turning into a tiger herself at the end when she fights
to regain her man. There’s a telling
generational relationship between
Mary, her sensible mother, Mrs. Morehead, played by Alice Duffy, and Mary’s young
daughter, given the correct amount of insight by Winsor School student
Sophie Rich.
The play is greatly enhanced by Brynna Bloomfield’s suggestive setting
of an art deco apartment, created by using only pillars, a sweeping
white curtain and a chandelier. The elegant set of costumes designed by
Gail Astrid Buckley is chic enough and so becoming to each actress that
I wanted to rush out to the nearest vintage store to shop for a new
wardrobe. The Speakeasy production of ‘‘The Women’’ is entertaining
fare but one wonders if there were more truths than easy laughs that
might have been uncovered in Booth’s evocative work.
The Women
At Stanford Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, through
Oct. 21. Tickets $46-$37 at 617-933-8600 or BostonTheatrescene.com.
Copyright 2006 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Tuesday, September 26, 2006