Playwright: Clare Booth Luce
At: Headstrong Productions at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron
Phone: (773) 250-3070; $22-$26
Runs through: Aug. 16
Familiarity with Clare Booth Luce's 1930s play (and subsequent movie), The Women, has become a rite of passage for male
homosexuals. Not familiar with it? Hand over your membership card! The reference to 'Jungle Red' nail polish has become
synonymous with bitchy gossip. You don't gossip? Hand over your membership card!
Luce's play is about a group of upper-crust women (here set by director William T. Buster in the 1940s) and their men. We have
innocent housewife Mary Haines (Ashley Blake), who's getting her first taste of what it feels like to have an unfaithful spouse, and her
circle of friends. There's Sylvia Fowler (Deanna Boyd), who has an acidic tongue with a taste for the meanest sort of gossip, wrapped
in a kind of sweet exterior. Her interest in her friend is an ill-sheathed sword, at the ready to skewer the innocent in an attempt to make
her own unsuccessful marriage somehow more palatable. Her other circle of friends have similar man/family problems and all of them
understand bitchery in the name of friendship. Take, for example, writer/middle-aged virgin, Nancy Blake (Angela Donovan) who
quips, 'Jungle Red—just the thing for tearing your friends' apart' in one of the play's most telling lines. During the course of the play's
2-1/2 hours, we sew up all the details, in swank bedrooms, at a chirpy manicurists, in a Reno divorce dude ranch, and at the sales
counter of Mr. Haines' mistress, the ruthless Crystal Allen (Lauren Carter). By play's end, Mary—and we—know just what it means to
use one's feminine wiles to become a first-class 'man trap.'
Director Buster has staged this show with a firm finger on what counts most: fabulous costumes. The play must boast more than a
hundred costume changes among its 14-member, all-female cast. The dresses are vintage and eye-catching, probably one of the
main reasons to see this commentary on bitchiness, society, and designer frocks. The ensemble seems to be having a great deal of
fun with Luce's script, playing each character with high style and a kind of vintage viciousness. They are mostly on the mark, but no
one performance stands out as truly remarkable. The American Theater Company's home gives the gals plenty of room to move
around in. But, despite touches like a glittering crystal chandelier and a period oversized sofa, the set seems a bit dowdy and frayed
around the edges, which is a minor distraction to Luce's cutting dialogue and plot line.
If you want to see what has become a gay classic, competently if not stunningly performed, Headstrong Productions' The Women
is the way to go.