Group rep Salutes If We Are Women

If We Are Women
by Joanna McClelland Glass
directed by Sherry Netherland
Group rep
through April 1
playing in rep with Lee Blessing's Cobb (opening February 17)

Needless to say, Joanna McClelland Glass' If We Are Women is a stodgy, heady piece of theatre in which very little if anything happens dramatically. It is the type of play that is better to read than watch. Every kind of woman is represented: the prairie woman, with little or no education, the intellectual and the wanna-be intellectual. There are three generations: two grandmothers, a divorced mother and her teenage daughter, all of whom, as different as they are, have in common a batch of insecurities... and they all want what is better for their lives and the lives of those they love. Now onstage at Group rep, Sherry Netherland has directed four actresses, all of whom give excellent performances, but, in spite of the fine work, something is missing.

Author Virginia Woolf, along with Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov and other famous writers are alluded to various times within the script. Women are women, so there are a great many ideas tossed about, in vivid Woolf style, about sexually aggressive behavior. And the title refers to women looking back to their mothers to explain behavior patterns. Grandma Rachel Cohen (Marcia Loring), as educated as she is, has always wanted more and finds Chekhov's characters a bore. Ironically, she wants and has always wanted what the Russian ladies of Three Sisters wanted, but fails to recognize it. Grandma Ruth Mac (Jacque Lynn Colton) from the prairie of Canada, wishes that she had graduated from the 8th grade and has a difficult time just understanding what her in-law is talking about. Then there's Ruth's daughter/author Jess (Lisa McGee-Mann), whose live-in lover has just died - and she suspects him of infidelity. Jess's daughter Polly (Annie Mackay) has been out all night with a boy she just met, and to make matters worse has invited him home to dinner. She has some serious prospects in the back of her mind which conflict with what her mother and two grandmas have planned out for her future. Therein lies the conflict. There's a lot of talk - a lot - with little action. Since the play plods along, director Netherland would be wise to pick up the pace and keep it moving at optimal speed.

The performances make the piece. Colton is a standout as Ruth. Her moment to moment befuddlement about everything that is happening around her is a joy to watch. She really connects to the character's simplicities and makes her dim, yet keen, never stupid and always loveable. MacKay brings youthful enthusiasm to Polly, McGee-Mann, who has a complex character to play, stands her ground, making her strong and motherly, in spite of Jess's many doubts. Rachel is rather humorous, but stuffy, and Loring seems to capitalize on the negative points, making her at times quite unlikeable. She needs to play against the grain and infuse her with a friendlier, more positive manner.

Chris Winfield has designed a fine set that is rightfully not suggestive of any specific place.

I pondered quite awhile wondering if my difficulties with the play exist because I am a man, but I really don't think that is the case. There were many women present opening night who had problems with the piece as well. As I said in the beginning, there are lots of intelligent ideas tossed about, but the basic theme of women connecting to one another is obvious from the get-go; we do not need a laborious two and a half hours to deduce that.

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