PicksInSix Review: Wife of a Salesman - Writers Theatre
Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Well…
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy
Depending on your familiarity with Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” you might benefit from a quick plot summary before taking on Eleanor Burgess’s “Wife of a Salesman,” a world premiere production that opened Friday night at Writers Theatre in Glencoe presented in association with Milwaukee Repertory Theater. That said, without giving anything away, all you really need to know going into the acclaimed director Jo Bonney’s brilliantly cast and tantalizing debut at Writers is that Willy Loman was unfaithful to Linda, his loving and trustworthy wife.
So, if you accept the fascinating “what if” premise that every wife knows about these things and will take action to save her marriage, then it is only a car ride from Brooklyn to Boston that stands between The Wife (Kate Fry) and her confrontation with The Mistress (Amanda Drinkall) in the meager apartment where all of the action of the 100-minute drama plays out. That apartment—a stunning visual design by Courtney O’Neill on the pleasant side of shabby, draped in nylon stockings with stylized sloping backwalls and an overall shape that evokes a 50s era compact makeup case—feels warm, inviting and isolating all at the same time. You might imagine it’s the kind of hot pillow place where joy only exists when the radio is on or when the Mistress and her lover are sharing the prominent wrought iron bed.
At the top, on an otherwise typical late Sunday afternoon in Boston, the Wife appears unexpectedly at the door, so startling the Mistress who is polishing her nails that she spills the thick, red polish on the coffee table. The moment that follows might have been quite a confrontation under other circumstances, but the Wife, posing as a travelling salesman, gains entry and begins to perpetuate the ruse in an effort to learn more about the competition.
Why the Wife is there is disclosed early on and then the two women begin to share the hard reality of their experiences with the same man, often troubling to the other. Passionate moments of excitement and adventure from the Mistress. Declarations of family responsibility and duty from the Wife. Common ground is established as similarities are revealed and frailties are exposed. And ultimately, the sad realization that they both have a lot to lose. You get the sense that someone will not escape this meeting unscathed as the pool of nail polish slowly oozes across that coffee table. I was sure it was foreshadowing for what is to come.
Perhaps the metaphoric references of Miller’s play got the best of me, but midway through it felt like there were only two probable outcomes: a cease and desist decree or an all-out catfight. There was an outside chance that Jim (Rom Barkhorder), one of two other characters in the play, might suddenly burst in on the two quarrelling and it would end precisely like Willy himself: on a long, lonely drive into dramatic immortality.
The exceptionally fine performances of Fry and Drinkall evolve into an exploration of what it is to be grossly manipulated by a man both claim as their own. And while my assumption proved to be false, Jim does burst onto the scene, an entrance that shifts the arc of Burgess’s cleverly complex drama and, momentarily, offers the audience time to completely recalibrate the relationship between the women on a new and fascinating level. Fry and Drinkall ingeniously coalesce, displaying an understanding for each other and their characters self-worth, that leads to a remarkably theatrical, and most unexpected, outcome.
PHOTO|Michael Brosilow
Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Theatre
325 Tudor Court, Glencoe
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