The Housewives of Mannheim

[joeboling]

Thursday 28 January 2010: The Housewives of Mannheim at the Phoenix Theater

This has been running for a while, and we just got to it - I'm glad we saw it before closing weekend - I gave it a standing ovation. Several years ago I met an MIT graduate in Seattle (at a Seattle Rep talk back) whose degree was in theater. They didn't offer that degree when I was there, but now they have over fifteen faculty and staff in their Music and Theater Arts department, including the fellow who wrote this play, Alan Brody. I don't think it's alma mater preference when I say that this is a beautiful piece.

The dialogue crackles, and the underlying philosophy is well-drawn and wonderfully presented. It doesn't hurt that the Phoenix has cast four great actors, and the director (SuzAnne Barabas) also directed the world premiere production at the New Jersey Repertory Company.

The play's title is taken from the title of a Vermeer painting that one of the characters, May (Lauren Briggeman), has seen at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. She didn't "get it" initially, but after sitting quietly and letting the scene's ambience permeate her, she discovered that the four women on the canvas were "more real than the movies." This is pre-media 1944 - the movies are a big deal, and her discovery that Vermeer could make a still painting come to life is a revelation to her.

This comes at a time when she is beginning to believe that life holds more for her than being a Jewish housewife in Flatbush. Her husband Lennie is overseas - no one knows when the war will end. But by the time it does, she wants to have accomplished some growth, such as by learning about art, and going to college. After ten years of marriage, she is ready to break out.

Billie and Alice (Alison Moody and Wendy Peace) are two other housewives living in her building. They pop in and out daily, talking about wartime circumstances and their kids and husbands. One day a new resident moves in - Sophie (Martha Jacobs). She is a refugee from Europe, a retired concert pianist with her own wartime experiences to relate - and to link to the situation she finds among these women and their expectations.

Playwright Brody shows how the experiences of Jews in Europe can be paralleled by the experiences of members of a friendship circle in any culture, when friendships are betrayed. These three women, who have been living in such a circle for a decade, don't really know each other - when they begin to, strains beget unexpected reactions.

Leave your pre-teens at home - Billie has a potty-mouth and there is some sensuality at mid-point. But bring your friends - this is a play you ought to see. Checkmarks to Barabas for direction and James Gross for set design, and to Moody and Jacob; double checks to Briggeman. Honorable mention to Peace. I did think that the three housewives were a bit overdressed for everyday activities. Jacobs broke an ankle during the weeks before opening, so they just put her in a vintage wheelchair and treated her disability as part of her persona - it worked great.

Closes 6 February - highly recommended.

[Nwalden]

saw this show at the Bloomington Playwrights Project a couple years ago and really enjoyed it... i may be mistaken (correct me if I am) but I believe it won their annual Riva Shiner award... i need to find time to make it over to the phoenix to see this one.

[Amaryllis]

I highly recommend it, too! I saw it last Friday night, and hope to finish my blog post about it tonight.

[IndyanaTekkie]

Ditto. I saw a special Preview Night for Indiana Equality with a friend from high school and her partner and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Finally a show I can comment on!!) :-)

[Amaryllis]

I posted my thoughts on this beautiful show on my blog late last night, then added a postscript about the wheelchair this morning. Here is an abbreviated direct link to the post:

http://bit.ly/bKjRtO

[mgmatlock]

Originally Posted by joeboling

double checks to Briggeman.
Closes 6 February - highly recommended.

I went to school with Lauren (we were in many of the same acting classes and were also in several productions together), and I can tell you she is a very, very talented lady, and was always on of my favorite people to work with. Glad to hear the show is as good as I hoped it would be; not sure if I'm going to have the chance to see it or not, but I hope everyone else does!!!

[epfeffin]

Originally Posted by Nwalden

saw this show at the Bloomington Playwrights Project a couple years ago and really enjoyed it... i may be mistaken (correct me if I am) but I believe it won their annual Riva Shiner award... i need to find time to make it over to the phoenix to see this one.

It did win the Reva Shiner award at the Bloomington Playwrights Project and was produced there in 2006. (Which just goes to show that the whole concept of "world premieres" has grown slippery and meaningless, a development that ought to--but probably won't--cure theaters of the disease they call premiere-itis.)

[Amaryllis]

I've been thinking about this "world premiere" business, too. Nothing in the Phoenix' publicity says anything about a world premiere. Nothing on the website of the New Jersey company that produced this play there last year says anything about a world premiere, only a New Jersey premiere. I was surprised, then, to find the words in one of our local reviews ( was it Nuvo's?)

What this really is is an example of a theatre writer getting the facts wrong somewhere along the way, not an example of a theatre exaggerating.

[epfeffin]

The New Jersey production was promoted by its theater as the world premiere and the media picked up on that accordingly; whether that error was made on the part of the theater or the playwright, it's impossible for those of us on the outside to say. Either way, presumably it was an honest mistake, but it does beget other mistakes; if the New Jersey show is promoted as the world premiere then it's natural for people or media to assume that the Phoenix production is the Indiana premiere. And in the end the BPP doesn't get the credit it deserves.

Mistakes of this nature are inevitable as long as theater administrators continue to cling to the notion of world (or regional) premieres as marketing coups to be prioritized over other matters. The best way to avoid them is to get away from premieritis and attach value instead to second and third and ninth productions of worthy plays.

[joeboling]

If the BPP production was non-Equity, and certainly if it was non-paying, an Equity house picking up the script would ignore such a production as a workshop or some such appellation.