They’re locked in the past on the Isle of Wight

The drama is set in a rundown apartment on the isolated Isle of Wight off the coast of England, where Madeleine (Carroll), a former curator of Islamic art at the British Museum, has cocooned herself among books, papers, and other clutter. As the play begins, Madeleine is opening the door for Frances (Plum), a novelist who is working on a memoir about Martin, her ex-husband, who, it turns out, conducted an affair with Madeleine throughout his marriage. Now that Martin has moved on to a younger woman, Frances tells Madeleine she’s looking for closure. Thus a series of anecdotes unfolds, as each woman offers her version of life with Martin.

Hare’s structuring of the women’s stories is unnecessarily weak. As each woman delivers her separate memories, they offer little opportunity for these rivals to find common ground. The only thing they seem to agree on is that Martin was a self-absorbed prig. In addition, having Frances miss the last ferry because she falls asleep in the middle of a cup of tea is an awkwardly contrived plot device that allows the women to continue their meeting through the night and into the next morning. Madeleine insists she will not be defined by the man in her life and discourages Frances from living in the past, yet both women recount past battles with Martin in such detail it’s clear they are both still locked in the past, unable to let go.

Perhaps Hare is trying to make a point about the weariness of late middle age, the energy required for a new beginning at the end of a bad marriage, or even the disillusionment of the idealistic baby boom generation. But the audience never learns enough about the motivations of either Frances or Madeleine to make their struggles compelling. When Madeleine turns to Frances and says, “So much courage, so little confidence,’’ it’s an insight the audience has been waiting for, but it is promptly dropped as Hare returns to the women’s obsession with Martin.

Originally written for British stage stars Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, the play does provide its characters, especially Madeleine, with some delicious bon mots, and Carroll delivers her waspish lines with relish. For her part, Plum effectively transcends the stereotype of the long-suffering housewife, giving Frances an unexpected dignity.

Jenna McFarland Lord’s suitably shabby set creates a sense of detail not always apparent in the dialogue, but not even the considerable talents of Carroll and Plum can give this talky play and these mundane lives the kind of heft we’ve come to expect from Hare.