Theater Review - Marital Discord
Boston Marriage takes a wickedly funny look at love
Boston Marriage arrives at 7 Stages as the wrong play at the right time - in the best possible way.
Gay marriage remains probably the most divisive controversy in the United States, and if not the tipping point of the 2004 presidential campaign, certainly one of the deciding factors. As if on cue, Boston Marriage presents two women who live as discrete life-partners in an even more repressive America of the 1890s.
Yet Boston Marriage hardly proves to be a politically correct, frowny-faced tale of saintly women martyred by the evils of a male-dominated society. Generally, playwright David Mamet only observes social niceties while dismantling them, and his hilariously nasty comedy treats a long-term romantic relationship as a take-no-prisoners blood sport. Directed by Joe Gfaller, Boston Marriage offers an eccentric and wickedly funny perspective on love and wedlock. Expecting the play to argue the case for civil unions, though, is like giving tickets to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a wedding anniversary present.
In an unnamed American city, two longtime companions reunite, each with news for the other. Anna (Shelly McCook), the slightly senior of the pair, wears a massive emerald necklace, a gift from her new “protector” - a wealthy gentlemen who keeps her in financial comfort in exchange for sex. When Claire (Mary Emily O’Bradovich) asks if her protector is married, Anna retorts, “Why would he need a mistress if he didn’t have a wife?”
Anna exults in her new source of independent means until Claire reveals not only that she’s fallen in love with a much younger woman, but that she plans to bring her new paramour to their house for a seduction - that very afternoon. When Anna’s temper flares, we notice the paradox of their same-sex relationship. Anna’s affair with a man is no threat, only “business,” while Claire’s planned assignation equals infidelity. And Anna’s far more furious that Claire intends to give away her heart as well as the rest of her body.
Despite her Kewpie doll cheeks, Shelly McCook’s Anna has the aquiline quality of Katharine Hepburn at her most imperious, disdainfully regarding the world from under a cocked eyebrow. Often she insinuatingly sidles up to Claire, stroking the other woman’s cheek or otherwise possessively touching her. O’Bradovich plays Claire as impetuous but more physically restrained, as if deliberately keeping her passions in check.
Anna reserves her greatest ire for Catherine, the household’s thick-witted maid played with superbly dull incomprehension by Katie Merritt. Anna voices the worst imaginable bigotries about the maid’s Irish heritage - despite the maid’s repeated protests that she’s actually Scottish. When Anna asks Catherine a rhetorical question about, say, the origins of the Irish potato famine, we brace ourselves for the slurs to come. Watching McCook at these moments is like seeing a major league pitcher go into a wind-up. Boston Marriage’s Irish taunts also establish the setting’s petty, intolerant class consciousness. The local gentry would view Anna and Claire with similar contempt if their Sapphic natures were public knowledge.
Mamet takes such pleasure in crafting Anna and Claire’s charged dialogue that you feel he’s been waiting for these women his entire career. The most testosterone-fueled of contemporary playwrights, Mamet never really “gets” women, who invariably turn out to be one-dimensional good girls or whores in his plays and film scripts. Anna and Claire prove more alive than any women he’s ever created.
That’s not to imply they’re typical ladies of their era. They don’t talk realistically, but in a quirky combination of high diction and low put-down, at times speaking in arch circumlocutions. When Claire balks at telling Anna she still loves her, Anna replies, “Did I say mean it? Did I say abjure hypocrisy?” They also display the creative profanity of Glengarry Glen Ross’ cutthroat real estate salesmen: “You have fucked my life into a cocked hat.”
Director Joe Gfaller sets a crisply unsentimental pace that keeps the catcalls flying like knives in a juggling act. The snappy tone suits the text, but may not be the only way to treat the material. Several times the women linger on their constrained, difficult lives and at one point wonder whether having children would have made them happier. At a low point, Claire declares they’ve been “all undone by men.” A more deliberate production could have delved deeper into these moments of melancholy desperation for a more feminist read on the play. Still, Claire and Anna both come across as so strong and so cynical, they’d never have the patience to view themselves as anybody’s victims.
When the women face potential ruin in the final scene, Boston Marriage builds suspense as to whether love will win the day. Without betraying the characters, the action hinges on whether the women will make huge sacrifices to stay at each other’s side, and Anna in particular finds an unexpected serenity and wisdom when facing the worst. But Boston Marriage comes short of completely endorsing marital bliss. Instead the play leaves audiences thoroughly amused yet half-convinced that any marriage is probably more trouble than it’s worth.