__________ _ « a p fernher 19. 2003 ■ J u s t M at 43
THEATER
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PHOTO BY
C
lare Boothe Luce’s The Women is one of the
classics in the camp canon. A right-wing
Republican and Italian ambassador (the first
woman to be appointed to a major country),
she wrote the play in the mid- 1930s. It was noto
rious not only for its nonstop parade of bitchery
onstage but also for Luces nasty barbs offstage.
Sample: “The women who inspired this play
deserve to be smacked across the head with a
meat ax, and that, 1 flatter myself, is exactly what
1 smacked them with."
Drubbed by the critics but cheered by Broad
way audiences, The Women tix>k on eternal life
when MGM made it into a 1939 film with Joan
Crawford and Norma Shearer in the lead roles
of, respectively, the man-snatching hussy and
the noble matron whose hubby gets snatched. (It
didn’t hurt that the two loathed each other in
real life, which made for great chemistry.)
Luce, who died in 1987, based her play on the
Park Avenue “bitches” in her social set, and it’s
hard to imagine she was welcomed back. But
maybe they were indeed forgiving. Scribner's Mag
azine said of Luce: “She writes of the rich and for
the rich— but she always gives them hell.”
The Women profiles Mary Haines, aforemen
tioned noble matron with a problem. Her illusion
that she was not only the wife but also the friend
and partner of wealthy workaholic Stephen
Haines is shattered when she learns he’s seeing
sleazy shopgirl Crystal Allen.
The characters who buzz arixind Mary repre
sent a gallery of sophisticated types: Sylvia Fowler,
the supposed best friend who’s more at home stick
ing a knife in her back than lending a sympathetic
ear; Nancy Blake, a cynical writer who seems a lot
like Luce; Edith Potter, a self-absorbed buffcxm
who’s always pregnant; and Countess de Lage,
equally self-absorbed and even more huff onrush.
I know my sex
triangle takes on the bitchiest play
ever penned by woman
by
G
ary
M
o r r is
The action shifts from Mary’s living nxim to
a spa, where the gals gather to sling the dish, to
Crystal’s bathroom and, finally, to a powder
nx>m at a posh club, where it all comes down.
Luce’s picture o f the brainless, immature
upper crust is often hilarious but nor necessar
ily pretty. These women are alm ost entirely
self-consumed, obsessed with their place in
society, annoyed by the servants who pamper
them and constantly schem ing to capsize each
other’s chance for happiness.
D
irector Don Horn’s choice of The Women
for triangle productions! seems odd at first
glance. The play’s misogyny gives it a dis
turbing undertone (but, paradoxically, much of
its power). Mary’s mother, for instance, is the
play’s standard-bearer of the anti-women cliché,
advising her daughter to just ignore the affair
and above all not to confide in her girlfriends.
“If you let them advise you, they’ll see to it, in
the name of friendship, that you lose your hus
band and your h om e.... 1 know my sex.”
Still, Luce’s lines are sharp enough and the
action lively enough to give the play enduring
interest. H om s reason for choosing The Women,
in fact, was its timelessness, he says. “Even
though it was written 67 years ago, divorce is still
strong, there are social ‘haves and have-nots,’
and women are still the stronger sex!"
T he acting in this version is mostly fine,
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particularly
compared with
PBS’ appalling
rendition last
year. Here the
performers play
off each other
with ease and
manage to
milk the
playwright’s
dialogue for
Who needs enemies when you’ve got The Women? See D on H orn ’s version of
maximum
the camp classic through Oct. 5 at Theater! Theatre!
comic effect.
Women, updating it from the mid- 1930s to the
Kate Donovan impresses as the extra-evil
Sylvia Fowler, while Lori Ferrano as Edith Pot
late 1950s. “The end of the ’50s was the end of
an ‘innocence peruxJ’ in America," he explains.
ter and Nicholette Reid as Countess de Lage
“We weren’t involved in a war, television wasn’t
get the most (well-deserved) laughs. Katie
as pervasive, women for the most part stayed
O ’Grady brings a reasonable mix of poise and
home and tended the family— and still managed
interior drama to perhaps the play’s most
to have a great sensg of fashion!" J H
thankless role, Mary Haines. Sherry Okamura
and particularly Heather Nelson Robertson
T he WOMEN rum through Oct. 5 at Theater!
work smaller roles to fine effect.
Theatre!, 3430 S .E . Belmont St. Tickets are $ 1 7 '
Especially gtxxJ is Eli Michaels as Mary’s
$23 from 503-239-5919 or TicketsWest. G ay
daughter. O ne of the worst aspects of M G M ’s
Night is Sept. 27; ask for the special reduced rate,
version was the toxic mawkishness of this char
and come dressed in anything jungle red!
acter, blubbering all over the place until you
want to pitch her off a rixif. Michaels is affect
G a r y M o r r is is a Portland free-lance writer who
ing without being cloying as the kid lost in the
wishes he had the kind of money that would allow
shuffle of divorce.
him to be snobby and bitchy.
Horn did make one intriguing change in The
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