I’ve experienced many iterations of Louisa May Alcott’s touching classic LITTLE WOMEN: The book. The movies– ALL OF THEM. The theatrical productions. I even played Amy once in my summer day camp production when I was 10 years old, and briefly lived next door to Alcott’s house in Concord! I LOVE THIS MATERIAL and was excited to revisit LITTLE WOMEN again, this time mounted by Actors’ Shakespeare Project promising “a bold new adaptation” by Kate Hamill. I was particularly delighted to see it on Super Bowl Sunday before the big game with the big men–topped off by Bad Bunny!
Photo: Benjamin Rose Photography
Not so fast. First, bad theater. Instead of Alcott’s tribute to the character, integrity, and individuality of these ironically monikered “Little Women,” Hamill has “updated” the work with a bellowing, one note “boldness” which I gather is meant to be contemporary. Here the March sisters inhabit the stage like a swarm of banshees, screeching their lines at warp speed. They evince little warmth, familial camaraderie, and scant knowledge of human behavior. Hamill has warped Alcott’s quartet of distinctive and endearing individuals into a clumsy gang of bickering oddballs while Shana Gozansky directs them into oblivion.
There’s a lot of acting from the neck up and declaiming of lines. When Marmee (poor, elegant Sarah Newhouse adrift among this gaggle) enters the scene, her daughters form an awkward tableaux around her, freezing in place as if for some invisible portrait painter. It’s hard to ferret out any relatable depth or complexity of feeling when every moment is so stiffly choreographed, every line reading hammered home, every encounter a squabble, every gesture a gesticulation. The lighting, music, and set suggest something tender and real. The ensemble which occupies that space does not.
Aislinn Brophy overacts as a screaming, one-note, bossy pants Jo until she actually dons pants in Act II and tells the lovelorn boy next door, Laurie (Jonah Barricklo), in no uncertain terms– she is “not like other women.” We got it. Hamill’s excavation of the lesbian subtext is appreciated, but this production has somehow equated stridency with queerness. It should also be noted that while Alcott (who embedded that subtext) succumbed to her publisher’s pressure to have Jo marry, she had Jo marry a man who supported his brilliant wife’s ambitions –and Jo kept writing.
Olivia Fenton plays the eldest and most traditional sister Meg, as a gangly, near-sighted goofball who meets her gawky match in Mr. Brooks (Alcott’s Mr Brooke) played by Chris Stahl who’s much better at impersonating a parrot than a human being attracted to another human being. Kaila Pelton-Flavin fares better as the physically fragile but spiritually strong Beth who understands death as part of life. Unfortunately she was apparently directed to bump into a lot of furniture on her way to passing out on the floor, before eventually dying. If scarlet fever hadn’t gotten her, it could have easily been a concussion.
Only little Amy emerges unscathed in the hands of the talented Chloe McFarlane. This youngest March sister is spoiled, melodramatic, and FUNNY! She offers us a lifeline to the wisdom and warmth of the source material which has us look kindly on Amy’s youthful limitations with faith that she will grow up.
Hamill sells Alcott short. LITTLE WOMEN already stands the test of time. These four individuated human beings –from iconoclast Jo, the headstrong, outspoken intellectual wrestling with tradition and ambition, to sweet Beth the saint among us– find their strength and humanity tested against the back drop of the Civil War. Hamill’s annoying insistence on what Alcott’s quiet but penetrating classic already conveys about gender politics, family, empathy, self actualization, and war– is superfluous. In fact, I would argue that Alcott’s classic speaks even more effectively to our own violent, divisive era, its sure and subtle tone cutting through the cacophony and amplifying the humanity of these not so little women. ASP’s production adds to the noise and makes Alcott’s little women– smaller.
LITTLE WOMEN at the Mosesian Center for The Arts in Watertown through March 1.
