Performance: Opening night (March 25)

Cast: Sally Lewis Hybl, Susan Dawn Carson, Kara Whitney, Eryn Carman

Director: Sandra Womochil Bray

Running time: About two hours, 45 minutes with intermission

Genre: Social satire

Plot: Thanks to her catty friends, sweet and noble Mary Haines (Sally Lewis Hybl) learns that her beloved husband Stephen is playing around with perfume counter kitten Crystal Allen (Christina Bakken). Mary’s pride (and her friends) dictates she leave her husband of 12 years. She regrets it, but in the end, there’s more to the long-suffering Mary than meets the eye.

Something else: Men are the raison d’etre of “The Women,” but they never appear on stage.

Best scene : In the first act, Mary’s cook (Patti Murtha) and maid (Rebecca Myers) deconstruct implications of the off-stage fight between Mary and Stephen. There was no truer interaction in the play, nor one with better balance between high comedy and real emotion.

High points: Committed performances all around, especially by Hybl, who actually endowed Mary with some believability, and Susan Dawn Carson and Eryn Carman, who played their caricatures to the hilt; Luce’s telling examination of class in 1936; R. Thomas Ward’s set, which was more functional than a Swiss Army Knife

Low points: The length of the piece; Stefani Doan’s costume, which were so cheap-looking and shoddily constructed that I couldn’t take my eyes off them; Diana Ben-Kiki’s wigs (especially Hybl’s) were equally sad 

The biggest problem: “The Women” itself. Clare Boothe Luce’s distasteful characters and mixed message (women should fight for their man by allowing him to fool around) made for an uncomfortable evening. It’s particularly an afront as the advertised75th anniversary tribute to the female founders of the FAC.

Read more: https://gazette.rt.gw/articles/clare-115060-boothe-luce.html#ixzz1Hj49FUsx

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