“The Women” will never be mistaken for, say, “The Ladies.” Not after nearly three hours of a gossiping, clawing, scheming, man-stealing good time.
Women are natural enemies in Clare Boothe’s 69-year-old comedy of bad manners, which thankfully has no real recognizable place in America today. It is now several seismic shifts in gender progress away from being hailed by The New York Times as “one of the unforgettable productions of the century.”
Its climactic message that the last good woman in America is just as capable of slithering as any man is colossally misguided, on the same plane as Sandy sporting cigarettes and leather in “Grease” 32 years later, or “Mean Girls” turning Lindsay Lohan bad in 2004. A mom’s advice that wives must tolerate infidelity is repugnant.
But theater companies still pull “The Women” out of mothballs for the pure spectacle of the challenge. With 40 female parts, this is event theater, a refreshingly old-fashioned night in which audiences dress at least to the eights – in homage to all those spectacular nines on the stage.
The play is filled with ribald cameos, making it a perfect match for companies such as Fort Collins’ OpenStage, which specializes in large ensemble pieces. And as shown in the Arvada Center’s hit production last year, it’s an empowering opportunity for female artists to work together as a community free of testosterone.
Set in 1930s high society and spanning New York to Nevada, this is the kind of show that demands in all areas, “Show me what you’ve got.”
Director Denise Burson Freestone’s production shows just what OpenStage has: terrific designers in costumer Rebecca Spafford and Michael Gorgan (set), and a deep roster of female actors spanning seven decades. Some of these vixens could stand eye to eye with Joan Crawford, while others are surely as nervous as an untested Doris Day when she made her Broadway debut as the saleswoman in 1936.
“The Women” is a spectacularly dressed “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding’s brilliant novel about how boys, stranded on a deserted island, will become as violent and predatory as their fathers. The island here is Manhattan, and without a man in sight, Boothe’s women prove quite capable of manly ambition and subterfuge.
Our moral compass is Mary Haines (Heather Lacy), a naively devoted housewife and mother surrounded by a bevy of hilariously cynical alley cats. When Mary learns her husband has cheated, she divorces, but after two years of dawdling, she connives to win him back. (Don’t ask why this cad is worth taking back – that’s so 2005.) Last year I saw Mary’s downfall as outright tragedy, though plenty of women browbeat me for not seeing her transformation as a sign of intestinal fortitude. But no matter how you claw it, Boothe is saying that the worst tragedy for a woman is losing her man.
The point is largely moot, however, because audiences aren’t looking for a moral here but to have a good time laughing and hissing at all these women behaving badly. And if the Arvada Center was able to capture lightning in a bottle last year, OpenStage certainly sends some of its own sparks flying.
Freestone puts 19 women onstage, a middling number compared with Broadway’s 35 and Arvada’s 30. This approach gives fewer women more to do, but with all the costume changes and double-casting, it’s a bit confusing at times who’s playing whom.
Sydney Parks is the most cleverly spiteful as Sylvia Fowler, though she ultimately chooses camp over any real sense of maliciousness, and Deborah Marie Hlinka has a few terrific turns as an age-defying countess. Kellie Rae Rockey turns in the most endearing performance as the perpetually pregnant Edith Fowler. She gets one laugh after another as a woman whose maternal instinct is trumped by her disgust (cigarette ashes falling on her breast while she nurses remains an all-time great comic gem). Edith’s proclivity for pregnancy actually affords dour Mary the funniest line of the night: “Edith, are you Catholic … or just not careful?”
While a Cole Porter and Fred Waring score is a nice touch, mannerisms, accents and dialects are erratic. The show never quite reaches its stinging heights because some in the cast are just too polite. In 1936, critic Brooks Atkinson called Sylvia “an odious harpy, a vulture who leaves no bones unpicked.” Parks is even a little bit sweet, and as the foremost “other woman” Crystal, Ailie Holland is downright sympathetic.
These women have fun, but there’s more fun to be had. And if bad must win out, it might as well be to the bone.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Women”
COMEDY|OpenStage Theatre & Company, 417 W. Magnolia St., Fort Collins|Written by Clare Boothe|Directed by Denise Burson Freestone|Starring Heather Lacy, Sydney Parks, Ailie Holland, J. Brooke McQueen, Irene Gordon and Kellie Rae Rockey|THROUGH JUNE 18|8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (also 7:30 p.m. June 16 and 2 p.m. June 5, 11-12|2 hours, 45 minutes|$13-$20|970-221-6730
