by Michael J. Vaughn
The phrase that keeps coming up in Joanna McClelland Glass's hyper-literary "If We Are Women" is, "Well, you know Chekhov--talk, talk, talk." It comes across as an apology for the lack of action in her own play, but the crucial difference is this: Chekhov's talkiness is interesting. McClelland Glass' talk is insufferable. The playwright uses her characters as pulpits to deliver sermons on every subject known to womankind, investing each with enough irony to choke a horse.
The production, the first of TheatreWorks' 26th season, is directed by Leslie Martinson. It starts off in promising fashion. Saskatchewan pioneer woman Ruth MacMillan (Linda Hoy) greets us from the terrace of her daughter Jessica's Connecticut beach house, lamenting the inferior quality of tea in a bag and poking fun at the locals, who dare to consider "Saskatchewan" a funny name while living in a place called "Connecticut." She is joined on the terrace by Rachel Cohen (Kathryn Trask), Jessica's bookish mother-in-law, who worries over how to converse with the uneducated Ruth without talking down to her.
The first sign of trouble is when Jessica (Christianne Hauber) arrives on the scene to deliver a lengthy exposition on the week's events (her lover, Martin Fleming, died the week before, and now her daughter Polly hasn't come home from her school dance the night before) after Ruth and Rachel have already spelled out everything in a previous conversation. It is the first of many times the play's conflicts will be overstated.
From there, "If We Were Women" turns into a 15-round heavyweight bout of "Oh yeah? I had it tougher than you!" with the three women constructing an endless litany of human suffering: abusive husbands, neglectful husbands, alcoholic husbands, illiteracy, divorce, anti-Semitism, near-starvation, writer's block, the inability to get into Ivy League schools, the rejection of God, and those nagging blank spaces in the crossword puzzle.
In musical terms, the delivery of said subjects comes in a constant, numbing fortissimo--a battleground of hurt feelings and martyrdom leaving the audience caring about absolutely no one.
By the time Polly (Elise Hornecker) enters the picture to tell the terrible triumvirate of her new-found love, rebel rich boy Charles Whitman, and their plans to settle on a farm in Colorado, there is no conflict in the audience's mind at all; the sentiment is more like, "Run, Polly! Run as fast as you can and get away from these people before they screw you up for life!"
As far as rating the performances of the actors, it's not easy, because the parts are so terrible. Linda Hoy delivers Ruth's refreshing bursts of prairie earthiness with divine flair, but is also saddled with a dozen Poignant-with-a-capital-P pioneer stories. She is closely followed by Hornecker, who as Polly at least gets to play the only sane person in the play, and manages to come across with a rare mix of naivete and intelligence.
Hauber as the moody writer Jessica is forever doomed to speak either in righteous declamation, one finger pointed in the air, or in grieving martyrdom, her face buried in her hands, and is further weighted by McClelland Glass' deep reflections on the writing life (there is nothing more boring than a writer writing about writing). Trask fumbles for quite a few lines as Rachel, but you can hardly blame her, because she has so damned many, and because Rachel, the frustrated academic who obviously became an agnostic because she decided she herself was God, is easily the most annoying character in the play. Her arrogance is multiplied by constant showy literary references, and by the aforementioned broken dreams of the Ivy League (oh, boo-hoo, she didn't get into Radcliffe).
The few redeeming moments in "If We Are Women" are those of interaction, when the characters take time out from the orations to actually care about one another, or at least attempt something resembling conversation. If McClelland Glass had given her characters more respect, instead of using them as mouthpieces, that promising first scene might have developed into something. As it is, TheatreWorks has wasted a lot of time and effort (not to mention a beautiful breakaway set by Joe Ragey) on a real stinker of a script.
"If We Are Women"
Who: TheatreWorks
When: Through July 16
Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, Mercy and Castro streets
Cost: $18-$26
Special information: This performance is available in "described narration" for the visually impaired.
Information: 903-6000
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