Pheonix Vaughn, Wendy Peace, and Corey Tazmania.
Photo credit: SuzAnne Barabas
When we look at an image, a scene in a painting for instance, how often do we take the time to wonder what the truth of that moment might have been when it was initially captured... perhaps some four-hundred years ago? That’s the question playwright Alan Brody asks us to ask ourselves as we watch the New York premiere of his compelling new play The Housewives Of Mannheim, currently running off-Broadway as part of the Americas Off Broadway festival at the 59E59 Street theaters.
The time is 1944. World War II is in full throttle thousands of miles away. In the kitchen of an apartment in a high-rise building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, three Jewish women, May, Alice and Billie, patiently wait for the safe return of their soldier husbands from overseas. The rhythm of their lives is slow. Children are cared for. Homes are maintained. They gossip, borrow coffee, trade ration cards and shop at Waldbaum’s and Loehman’s. Everything is status quo... till May, (a pretty, earnest, and subtly emotional Phoenix Vaughn), takes a step that forever changes her world.
May has heard about a new Vermeer painting “The Housewives Of Mannheim”, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her desire to satisfy a budding curiosity about life’s possibilities beyond the walls of her modest two-bedroom home, she ventures out to see it. Quite to her surprise, as she views the Dutch Baroque painting, she begins to reflect upon who these women really were and what their lives were like. And in that moment, something in the (fictitious) painting jump-starts a sense of wonderment and adventure in her. Suddenly, she understands that a whole new world of possibilities exists. Suddenly she’s full of questions. Suddenly May finds herself on a journey of self-discovery that will leave her questioning the very fabric of everything she believes to be right and true.
As May struggles to redefine herself and the direction of her life, her once solid friendships with Alice and Billie, the two women closest to her in her daily life, begin to redefine, as well. ‘Homemaker’ Alice (a prissily conservative Wendy Peace) grows threatened by May’s burgeoning lust for knowledge and experience; while ‘jokester’ Billie (a tough, brassy Corey Tazmania), grows increasingly intrigued and emboldened by May’s newfound adventurous spirit. This is all further complicated by the entrance into their quiet simple universe of cultured and worldly Sophie, (a flawlessly Parisian-Viennese-accented Natalie Mosco), a woman who has fled the Holocaust. It is Sophie’s appearance in May’s apartment that ultimately shifts the balances of power and friendship between the women and forces their lives to spiral off in new directions. Or does it?
To give more away of the plot might undermine one’s fundamental enjoyment of the play. But suffice it to say, it is a piece worth seeing. “The Housewives Of Mannheim” is a thoughtful examination of perspective and the importance of vantage point. It is a play whose characters are asked to discover how drastically one’s views of the world can change simply by shifting where one stands. The women in that Brooklyn kitchen—who lead seemingly straightforward lives—experience great upheavals in their friendships, and are asked to brutally examine their loyalties, fears, jealousies and betrayals.
And it is interesting to realize—as one is given some insight into the moments in these women’s lives—how immensely different people’s existences truly are from the ‘snapshot’ impressions we form of them from but a cursory glance at their lives. And so, as we watch their stories unfold, beyond that ‘snapshot’, we begin to speculate about the lives of their predecessors too. We consider, just as May did, the existences of those women who lived four-hundred years before our Flatbush gals. The Dutch women performing their routine chores in a time before “The Great Wars”. Those women in the painting of the same name: “The Housewives of Mannheim”. And we attempt to imagine what their experiences and dreams might have been back then—before and after that ‘snapshot’ froze them forever on a canvas by Vermeer. But unfortunately... we’ll never really know. So we ask: Can we ever in fact judge anyone or anything fairly, from just a cursory glance?
Which brings us to the most compelling question Brody’s play wants us to examine. It is in regard to the concept of “willful ignorance.” Early in the play the phrase is used to define the complicit inactions of the German and Austrian populations who turned blind eyes to the sufferings of their Jewish, homosexual and gypsy brethren. Later it describes those ordinary Americans—not unlike these housewives in Flatbush—whose unwillingness to grow past their own fear-based ignorance renders them deaf and mute to their own sufferings, as well as the suffering of others. And all throughout his affecting and demanding play, Mr. Brody is challenging us to ask ourselves if we are at all like them. And we do wonder.
The production is beautifully directed by SuZanne Barabas. (It originally premiered at New Jersey Rep.) It has a marvelous realistic 1940’s kitchen set designed by Jessica Parks. Patricia E. Doherty’s ‘spot-on’ period costumes are brilliantly created to exist within the color palate of the set as well as the actual Vermeer painting itself—yet somehow you’d never notice this. The lighting design by Jill Nagle is lovely—especially the cool romantic blues she employs for the delicately directed seduction scene on the fire escape at the end of Act One. Even the sound design by Merek Royce Press is notable. The period music is well chosen and has been tweaked to emit the quiet haunting echo of a distant time.
There are many lovely moments throughout this production. For instance, the way May, in one simple gesture at the top of the show, removes dry clothes off a clothesline and the audience is swept back sixty-six years to a time not only before ipods... but before even the dream of a washer and dryer in every home. Or Sophie’s “Fourth Nocturne” recital reverie, where as she and May listen to her old recording, Sophie relives her glory days with a few simple gestures of piano ‘air fingering’. And where, with these gestures, we are transported back with her to a time in Vienna when life was still cultured and beautiful, and a hideous “willful ignorance” had not yet begun to rear its ugly head.
And of course there’s the final tableau, where the painting “The Housewives of Mannheim”, comes to life on stage. And in that glorious moment we realize that we’ve now ‘seen’ these ‘simple’ Flatbush housewives outside of their own ‘canvas’. And we begin to understand that beyond our initial snapshot impressions of them, these women lived immensely diverse and unexpected lives. As do we all. And then, as we’ve begun to understand and appreciate the intricacies of their struggles... we realize we’re all just creative souls yearning for that much more... each of us struggling every day to perfect the art of fully living our own lives. Stunning!
59E59 Theaters – 59 East 59th Street.
For a limited engagement from Thursday, May 6th through Sunday, June 6th.
Performance schedule: Tuesday – Wednesday at 7:15PM; Thursday – Friday at 8:15PM; Saturday at 2:15PM & 8:15PM; and Sunday at 3:15PM.
Ticket price is $35 ($24.50 for 59E59 Members) Tickets available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at http://www.ticketcentral.com For more information visit http://www.59E59.org