The Women, a social satire written by Clare Boothe Luce in 1936, runs for five weeks, thru October 21, 2006, in the Nancy and Edward Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in Boston’s South End.
Guys, I’m warning you, this is not an equal opportunity play. It is of the women, for the women, and by the women. And by George, they make the most of it. All 20 of them. There ain’t a Y chromosome in the cast. But pay attention, it’s good fun and is instructive, especially if you think you’re the one in your relationship’s driver’s seat.
The core of the play revolves around several women, from recently married to long and unhappily married. Thanks to their husband’s wealth and power, they’re thrown together in a cement mixer called Manhattan high society. The 1930s were before Eleanor Roosevelt made charitable work fashionable. One of the highest callings for these women is gossiping about infidelities and aesthetic tastes. “Yes, darling, that dress cuts your waist in half, (pause…) and makes your hips look twice as wide,” uttered by one woman of whom it is said, “If you’ve got Sylvia for a friend, you don’t need enemies.”
Plays like this are seldom performed any more. No gimmicks, no snazzy sets, no extravagant costumes, just clever dialogue that resembles machine gun fire. The socialites’ verbal bullets are uttered with their white gloves on but are a blood sport for the Manhattan socialites created by Clare Boothe Luce in her 1936 play, The Women.
The story hinges around a discovery that the husband of one of the happiest married women has strayed from the marriage bed and is carrying on with a, sniff, common salesgirl from Saks.
The Speakeasy Stage production’s actresses dig their ‘jungle red’ nails into their roles with gusto. Nancy E. Carroll, Aimee Doherty, Ellen Colton, Kerry Dowling, Alice Duffy, Anne Gottlieb, Amanda Good Hennessey, Maureen Keiller, Mary Klug and Sonya Raye aren’t into playing with nuance here.
It was hard to tell whether the play’s lead character, Mrs. Haines, was underplaying her role or was overshadowed by the unadulterated camp of her peers but that was a minor distraction. There are deliciously, sublimely catty, over the top performances up and down the line.
Photo: Clare Boothe Luce in 1935 (www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0010.htm)
Luce introduces social commentary in several scenes from the women who toil for these rich self-absorbed prima donnas. “Lady, you ain’t felt pain till you had your baby on a cold kitchen floor, make supper for your husband, then go to work the next day with your insides hanging out” says the nurse to one socialite matron who whines about her hard delivery while lounging in her comfortable hospital bed and nibbling on bon-bons.
Other commentary comes from unexpected sources. When the heretofore happily married Mrs. Haines asks her mother what to do about her husband’s infidelities, mother, who's been through it all, replies, “Nothing.”
“Stephen’s not tired of you, he’s tired of himself. When we get tired of ourselves, we go shopping. We redecorate the house. Men never think of something so simple. They want to see themselves differently in the mirror of another woman’s eyes. There’s nothing like a dose of another woman to make a man appreciate his own wife.”
In between these commentaries on class and caste, there are more catty one-liners than sequins on an evening gown. “Keep your chin up…both of them,” says one friend to another who’s complaining about her husband’s peccadilloes.
The two-hour play loses some steam in the second act. A certain fatigue develops after so many clever one-liners and over the top acting in the same style, no matter how outrageous. An exception to this is the play’s chief scene-stealer Mary Klug, whose larceny is worth the price of admission as she camps up her role as the Countess de Lage. To accomplish that in a company of such terrific actresses is quite a feat.
The play withstands the test of time fairly well. Today’s ‘Desperate Housewives’ is ‘The Women’ with the y chromosomes added. Our hunger for portrayals of gossip, infidelity, and bratty behavior seems insatiable. We need such guilty pleasure when the news on the front pages is so damn bleak.
These women dealt with the ethos of their time the only way they could. They may have savaged one another in the gossip trade but they never felt more comfortable in any other company but their own.
i would enjoyed it even more if it would describe every character and their names
Posted by: elizabeth padilla | October 19, 2009 at 01:45 AM