Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 22, No. 36, Ed. 1 Friday, January 20, 2006 Page: 43 of 68
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style stage
Bridge and bitchiness
Contemporary's 'The Women'
bristles with delightful wit
NOTHING LIKE A GRANDE DAME: Mary Haines (Fairchild, left) plots her next move with the help of some society ladies
(Yancey, Diotalevi and Loncar).
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Sarcasm drips from the lips of every character
in "The Women," Clare Boothe Luce's astonish-
ingly still-relevant 1936 play about Mew York
society. The women in question are mostly the
grande dames of the social elite who trade gossip
and husbands as freely as bids in a game of con-
tract bridge.
"The Women" is a classic both as a feminist
tract and as an urbane, wordy screwball comedy,
complete with catfights and razor wit.
Remarkably, neither the plot nor the dialogue
nor even the motivations seem dated. These
ladies wisecrack about divorce, impotence, infi-
delity, gold-digging tramps, psychoanalysis —
has anything changed in 70 years? Be glad it
hasn't.
Mary Haines (Lisa Fairchild) coos lovingly
about her husband, Steven, whom she praises as
devoted. But behind her back, Mary's clutch of
friends whisper about how Steven is stepping out
on her with Crystal (Kristen Blevins James), a
shopgirl a Sak's who's happy to homewreck.
When Mary finds out, she's forced to deal with
competing advice: Should she ignore the situa-
tion (and her pride), or ruin a marriage she
thought was perfect?
This production wouldn't work so well with-
out director Susan Sargeant's insanely tight pac-
ing. She treats the dialogue like a power lawn-
mower that does its best if you just turn it on,
open the throttle and let it cut down everything in
its path. Sargeant realizes with a script like this,
there are only two speeds available: fast or dead.
And nothing dies here.
C ertainly the cast rises to the occasion. Sylvia,
the cattiest of the coven, is a social cockroach
who takes any side that serves her, and Morgana
eith dishman
Shaw is brilliant portraying her. Shaw is theatri-
cal tofu, capable of taking on whatever quality
she needs to make a part work. Here, she's got
that '30s timbre down cold, speaking in a rapid,
knowing and saucy clip.
Marisa Diotalevi, a charismatic comic actress,,
is almost unrecognizable here, dressed in her
drab clothes and with her hair in a mousy-brown
bun. What she lacks in flamboyance, she more
than makes up for in the deliciousness of the
lines she delivers. (Of all the cast members, she
gets the most zingers.) "Practically nobody ever
misses a clever woman," she laments with a
droll, Dorothy Parker-like facade.
Despite the overall success in casting, the one
weak spot is Fairchild. She seems wrong for the
part only insofar as being slightly off in most par-
ticulars. She's slightly too old, slightly too dull,
slightly too closed off and pinched. Her voice
doesn't carry the dialogue like Shaw's does, and
she doesn't get the dithery moments that Laura
Yancey, as the Countess de Lage, gets to enjoy.
The look of the production, and its fluidity, is
without fault. Randel Wright is a genius of a set
designer, effortlessly swapping out 12 different
settings with art deco mirrors and a TSew York
City skyline backdrop that shimmers like a
gigantic Lite-Brite of backlit pointillism.
Christina Dickson's costumes are appropriately
glamorous. They, and everyone else involved,
evoke the mores of a bygone era while making
subtle observations about today. It's a great the-
atrical start for the new year.
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01.20.06 I dallas voice I 43
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 22, No. 36, Ed. 1 Friday, January 20, 2006, newspaper, January 20, 2006; Dallas, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth238892/m1/43/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.