Theater

The Heiress

Catherine Sloper is a very timid and homely girl who lives with her father, a widowed doctor, in a rich house in a very wealthy neighborhood. She is incredibly shy when put into social situations and tries to find any excuse to get out of them. She can never say what she feels or act as most girls do around company, especially young men. Her father finds her completely hopeless, lacking any ability to be graceful, charming, or witty. He is constantly comparing her to his late wife and fears that Catherine will never find anyone willing to marry her.

Then one evening she meets Morris Townsend, a distant relative of her cousin’s fiancé. He tries to woo Catherine by visiting her almost everyday and writing her love poems. He insists that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever met and admits to her that he is in love with her. Although it is very early in their relationship, Catherine believes that she loves him too. They are very happy together, so it seems, and they begin making secret plans to be married. However, Catherine’s father is not pleased with Mr. Townsend and assumes that his intentions are deceptive. He believes that he is only after Catherine for her fortune. Catherine does not think Morris would ever be so crooked and convinces herself that he truly loves her for her and nothing more. But upon her father’s request, she goes to Europe with him for six months. During this time Dr. Sloper hopes that she will forget all about Morris and perhaps find somebody else. But after arriving home, Morris is still waiting for her and she is still in love with him.

Later in the play, Dr. Sloper blows up at Catherine and basically tells her she is worthless and he resents the fact that his wife died bringing her into the world. This hurts her very much and she realizes that her father does not love her and decides she never wants to see him again. She could not care less about any inheritance he leaves her, just as long as she has Morris. On the night that Catherine and Morris plan to elope, she makes the mistake of telling him that she has refused her father’s money and only cares about being with him (Morris.) Morris tells her that he is going to pack all of his things and promises to meet her very late when everyone is asleep. She waits and waits and eventually realizes that he “jilted” her. She is absolutely crushed and because of it she becomes a very bitter woman.

Sometime later her father dies and she ends up with the inheritance after all. Two years later Morris comes back to find Catherine and hopes to reunite with her after learning that she has not married yet. Catherine plays with his emotions and makes him believe she still loves him. They make plans to marry yet again and she sends Morris away to pack his bags so they can run away together. Catherine has turned into a callous, bitter woman seeking revenge, and at the end of the play she is the one who jilts Morris.

I saw this play a few weeks ago at the Pioneer theatre where the set and stage were much larger and more professional looking than Studio 115 (where I saw Top Girls.) The costumes of the characters were extravagant and detailed. They were accurate with the time period and helped to define the characters, such as their wealth and position, not to mention their personalities. The lighting in the play was very good and I especially liked the way the windows were used. By employing different lighting techniques, the time of day and weather conditions (rain streaming down the window pane or lightning flashes) could be implied through the windows making the set seem more lifelike. I also liked the use of candles, especially while Catherine waited up in the middle of the night for Morris to arrive, or as she walked up the stairs at the close of the play. The set and the props that were used were also more elaborate than that of Studio 115. There was real food and drink, realistic looking backdrops, stairs, various doors, and numerous pieces of furniture consistent with the time period. Although the play somewhat lacked in the sound department (i.e. it could have used more music or sound effects to create a greater degree of drama), it did not noticeably affect my attitude toward the storyline or the acting abilities of the performers.

I had never seen or heard of this play before and for some reason I thought it was going to be a comedy. Although there were some funny lines that made the audience laugh, this play was more of a serious drama. The attitude of the play was somber at times and the tone was dark, if not a little heartbreaking. At some level I think we can all relate to Catherine. There have been times in my own life when I have felt unloved by my own parents, stupid, boring, or only interesting because of some material possession I had acquired. Because we have all experienced those kinds of feelings on some small scale, it is easy for us to feel gut-wrenching pity for Catherine. I believe the intention of this play is to get the audience to question the characters’ objectives from an ethical point of view. Did Dr. Sloper have the right to expose Morris as a gold-digger? Could Catherine have been happy with Morris despite his one true desire? At what cost was Catherine able to gain the upper-hand? Was Morris wrong for trying to attain Catherine’s riches? Many business men might disagree. After all, we live in a “dog-eat-dog” world where just trying to survive far surpasses love or being honest. Or do we? These are absorbing issues that the play causes the audience to consider.

After the play had ended, I heard several people comment on how boring it was. However, I did not think it was boring at all. I was entertained and felt like the acting was well done. Each performer seemed to take on the personality of their character quite well. I kept looking for any indication that Morris truly loved Catherine. That's just the romantic in me I guess. By the middle of the play I was still not sure if his only goal was to get his hands on her inheritance. But by the time Catherine announced to her father that she no longer cared about her inheritance and told Morris about it, it became clear to me that he was only after her wealth by the way he started to behave. After striving to conquer his obstacles and using every tactic he could think of to marry Catherine and get her money, the end result (his expectation) was not fulfilled, as we saw him desperately beat at her door and call out to her at the end of the play. I was happy with the ending and felt like Morris got what he deserved, but I also felt sorry for Catherine that the rest of her life was probably spent being bitter, cold, untrusting, and unloved.

Despite any flaws the play may have had, I felt like it was a good performance. The actors made their characters realistic, the theater provided quality productions elements, and I was happy to get out of the house and experience some live theater.

Theater

Top Girls

Last Friday night Mike and I went to see Top Girls at Studio 115 on campus. I was a little skeptical at first because I didn’t know if I would enjoy it. Mike was also wary about going to a “feminist” play. But in the end we both looked at each other and said, “That was good!”

The play is about a career driven woman named Marlene who works for an employment agency called Top Girls. The play starts out with a dream like sequence where Marlene is having dinner with five historical “top girls” who are supposedly there to congratulate her on her promotion in the company. Throughout the dream the five women get progressively more drunk and emotional as they each discuss their pasts and the different experiences they have had. Although the women have accomplished much during their lifetimes and hold famous status for one reason or another, it is soon revealed that each of them has also suffered in various ways.

After the dream sequence ends the play jumps into the present day, which is actually the early 1980’s. Marlene is at a desk interviewing women for work in the highly competitive job field full of men. After this scene, the story of Angie begins as she and her friend Kit hide from Angie’s mother Joyce. We learn that Angie hates her mother and fantasizes about killing her. She is a troubled teenager who has dropped out of school and does not have any friends her own age. She looks up to her Aunt Marlene and wants to be around her as much as she can. Later in the story it is discovered that Marlene is actually Angie’s mother and her sister Joyce has been taking care of Angie all these years as her own daughter. Marlene and her sister Joyce are at odds with each other during the play and eventually have an argument which allows them to get things off their minds that they had been bottling up. The play continues and we start to realize that, although Marlene might be a successful business woman, she had to give up her daughter and cut ties with many of her other family members just to achieve it.

The tone of the play seemed a bit dark and the attitude was one of struggling to find happiness, or just to survive in the world. I think the intention of the play was to make the audience question the abilities of working women. Can they be aggressive, cutthroat, successful career women and also have a family life with loving, nurturing, and kind attributes? I also think the intention was to show that sometimes getting what you want in life requires that you sacrifice something else that may also be very important.

I was impressed with the acting abilities of the cast because they made the show very realistic and I found myself caught up in the story line and sitting on the edge of my seat. Since the play was set in London, the cast was required to take on British/English accents. I thought that was interesting, and maybe even a little hard to do, especially being unfamiliar with talking that way or using words not necessarily a part of everyday American vocabulary. I was also amazed at the way they could focus on their lines with as much overlapping dialogue that there was. But the one thing that really impressed me is the way the cast didn’t let little mistakes affect the rest of their performance. If someone made a slip-up, they moved on with their lines as if it did not happen. For instance, there was one instance where Angie and Kit were supposed to spit on their hands and then shake each other’s hands to make a pact. I don’t think they were really supposed to spit, but Angie actually did. This could have made Kit start laughing or get distracted or grossed out, but she went with it and made it seem like it was supposed to happen. She merely wiped the drop of saliva that landed on Angie’s chin and stayed in character. Also, at one point Marlene seemed to have had a tickle in her throat and it appeared as though she was going to have a coughing fit. Luckily during the scene there was actual water on the table she could drink as though it was part of the play and napkin on the table she could use to wipe her dripping nose. It seemed like it could have been rehearsed, but it wasn’t. The last thing that amazed me is that the characters didn’t get out of their “zone” even when the fire alarm went off. The play had just begun and then all of a sudden a loud, abrasive alarm and flashing lights went off. Everyone in the building (cast and crew included) was ushered outside into the cold night where we had to wait for nearly 40 minutes until the alarm could get turned off. This could have been a huge irritation or distraction for the cast, but when the play eventually started again, they continued strong and didn’t let the instance affect them at all. I felt like the characters really “lived their parts” and maintained a certain degree of “spiritual concentration.”

The stage that the cast performed on was very simple. Studio 115 is a small room fit for a small audience. The props mostly consisted of black boxes and flat, black boards used for tabletops. The lighting was very simple as well. The most extreme use of light was when a spotlight was needed and another time when there was some flashing that resembled lighting. The sound of the play was great and I enjoyed the music they used, which was 1980’s song renditions to fit each character and scene. The costumes were also fairly basic but I highly enjoyed how each character from the dinner scene changed their clothes in front of the audience and became a new character. To me this kind of signified that the characters were parallel in some way. It was interesting that they essentially used the same attire from the first scene to create an entirely different costume for the following scenes. The production elements were not extravagant in any way compared to other plays that I have seen. But I honestly didn’t think it mattered much as long as the acting was well done, which, in this case it was.

Overall I think the play was well done and Mike and I were both happy we went to see it. Watching the performers made me want to become a better actress for the scenes we are working on in my acting class. I also felt inspired to go watch more plays! I think there is something to be said about live theater that just does not compare to watching a movie. If a play can capture my complete attention and draw me into the story and impact me in a way that makes me think about myself and my life with a different perspective, then it has accomplished something. And I feel like this particular play did just that.