A take on 'The Women' for modern times
"The Women" is one of those plays that -- if not done with an eye toward modern sensibilities -- could turn off audiences. These days, performing Clare Booth Luce's 1936 play as if it were just about bitchy, backstabbing women is going to raise hackles.
In ``The Women," Mary, a Manhattan socialite who thinks she has the perfect husband, discovers through the grapevine that he's cheating on her. Heading West for a divorce, she's advised by a gaggle of women, friendly and not, on whether to stay in the marriage. In the end she makes her own decision.
In the SpeakEasy Stage production directed by Scott Edmiston , which begins previews tonight at the Boston Center for the Arts, the focus is not on the women's character flaws, but on their need for money and security during the Depression, when women didn't have many choices.
``It's what happens to women when they're not allowed to have their own ambition, their own dreams," says Anne Gottlieb , who plays Mary. ``They're totally dependent on men to survive financially. Most of the marriages are about trading up and getting more financially stable. I think because it's 2006, our interpretation has a few more layers. But it's crucial to understand that the socioeconomic situation in 1936 is a context to be deeply considered in terms of what the play is about."
Gottlieb plays Mary as a product of her time, but perhaps less naive than she's usually portrayed.
``Mary needs to negotiate whether to stay in a marriage that doesn't have the integrity it was founded on," Gottlieb says. ``She's struggling with a lot of different responses to her situation that she gets from her mother, daughter, and friends. By the end of the play she's a very strong woman."
Paul Daigneault, SpeakEasy's producing artistic director , says that one reason he decided to do the play was because Lyric Stage Company's ``1776" was going to use up a lot of the male actors in town, so there would be fewer of them available -- but a lot of women. He got them. Among the 20 actresses playing 35 roles are some of Boston's best and funniest, including Nancy E. Carroll, Maureen Keiller, Mary Klug, Ellen Colton, Alice Duffy, and Sonya Raye.
Through Oct. 21 at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Stanford Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets: 617-933-8600, www.bostontheatrescene.com
