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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Boston Marriage Farcically Explores Love

In response to criticism that he could only write for men, playwright David Mamet penned the farcical “Boston Marriage” in 1999, following two Victorian era women as they explore their relationships with each other and the people who surround them. The play enjoyed a Nov. 14-16 run in the Hepburn Zoo, delighting audiences with its careful presentation and razor sharp wit.

Members of the audience may have been expecting a scene out of a Jane Austen novel when they walked into the Zoo, greeted by Victorian furniture and harpsichord music playing overhead.  Many were happily surprised by the vibrancy with which they were greeted over the next 90 minutes. The senior acting work of Christina Fox ’13.5 and Meghan Leathers ’13.5, turned the play “Boston Marriage” into a comic piece, examining relationships between gender and class through a fresh, playful lens, engaging the audience from the first quip to the final bow.

After much deliberation, Fox and Leathers departed from typical theater department productions and the roles they have filled in their time at the College to chose a play recommended to them by Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Draper.

“It’s hard to find a comedy featuring two female protagonists that aren’t full of angst or misery,” Leathers noted. “The leads in this play are fantastic – they’re exciting and great and strong and absurd, and it’s been really challenging and fun to play with.”

“Boston Marriage” is built around the protagonists’ dynamic dialogue. Anna, played by Leathers, is the narcissistic, impossibly witty mistress of a wealthy man and a  friend of Claire’s, acted by Fox, a woman visiting to tell the news of the new love of her life – a young woman. The emotional and physical tension between the leads is instantly recognizable, Anna sporting her lovers’ family heirloom emerald necklace, touching its garish size to reinforce its representation of all she has acquired. The necklace proves to be the key to the development of the plot, Claire’s lover stealing away to Anna’s residence only to find her father’s necklace sitting on a strange woman’s neck. Both women are potentially ruined financially and socially, and they turn to each other for comfort and complaining.

Anna and Claire are in a Boston marriage, a term used to refer to two single women living together in Victorian times with possible sexual implications. They curse each other’s faults, often likening one another to some sort of farm animal, only to be driven together by moments of affection and desire.

The two women are delightful to watch, with members of the audience jealously wishing that they too could join the action. The deliciously wicked gleam in Fox’s eye as she counters Leathers’ practically perfect comedic timing, along with Leathers’ revelling in the depth of her character, delivering line after line of complex, nuanced dialogue, is truly a treat for the audience.

Mamet does not give Claire as many bracingly funny lines, and in the wrong hands she could appear to be a weaker, more subservient version of Anna, but Fox breathed vibrant life into Claire with a graceful, realistic subtlety that revealed her character’s power over the duration of the show.

The only other character who appears in the play is Anna’s maid, Catherine, who finds herself in her own difficult situation as she must grapple with the possibility of pregnancy and the power that men hold over women in Victorian society. Charlotte Michaelcheck ’15 quickly became an audience favorite, charming with her character’s accent and tendencies for emotional outbursts (as well as, I suspect, Michaelcheck’s extremely expressive eyebrows and facial expressions).

Though the Irish – no, Scottish – maid has intimate access to Anna and Claire’s lives, in many respects she holds, like the audience, the role of an objective viewer, separated by class, nationality, and her love for men. Seemingly oblivious and occasionally rendered incompetent by nervousness, Catherine surprises the audience and the women she serves with an unassuming, profound wisdom that even the clever and confident Anna and Claire do not possess. These bits of wisdom interrupt a role that, if possible, provided even more comic relief to the play than the two characters already displayed.

Indeed, some in the audience were simply giddy in anticipation of the next laugh, gasping between breaths and nervously waiting for one of the three characters to continue the comedic rhythm.

Costume designer Elisabeth Harmor ’16 provided Leathers and Fox with beautiful wardrobes, supplying them each with two intricate Victorian period outfits, as well as accessories for a game of psychic dress up that did not disappoint.

Overall, the show had a vitality of spirit that radiated into the audience.

Director Jake Schwartzwald ’14 has been following Fox’s and Leather’s thesis play production process since last year, first agreeing to direct another play that the pair had selected before transitioning to “Boston Marriage” this semester.

“We sought Jake out because we knew we wanted to do a comedy and Jake is a comedian and we knew he could work with us and guide us in that comic spirit,” Leathers said.

Indeed, Leathers, Fox and Schwartzwald enjoyed an ease in each other’s company over casual lunch that transferred into a fluidity of performance onstage.  It takes a lot of effort to appear at ease, and Leathers, Michaelcheck and Fox performed gracefully and naturally under Schwartwald’s direction.

The audience responded so well to “Boston Marriage” because it made them laugh, and after they finished laughing, they realized that Anna, Claire and Catherine were more relatable than first appearances may have allowed.

“Though this play is so different from Mamet’s other works, it’s very much the same in dealing with wealth, appearances, personal gain and the emptiness that can create,” Fox said. “There is timelessness to romantic relationships and the competitiveness within them.”

“Anna and Claire are competing for and with each other,” Schwartzwald succinctly noted.

“Boston Marriage” speaks to lives left behind and sacrifices made to search for better days, whether one is leaving a homeland to serve wealthy women or rejecting passion for a female friend to find financial security in a man. The audience left satisfied, connecting with each of the characters through their humor and pain, relating to women seemingly worlds away.

Some of the plays put on by the theatre department are thought-provoking, disturbing, subversive and puzzling, and those plays need to be shown to an audience of college students that may not usually be exposed to that certain brand of theatre.  It is important to also remember that sometimes people go to plays to at once forget their troubles and be reminded that they are not alone, and that this is equally important, as “Boston Marriage” showed. As Anna sagely notes, “We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”


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