A complete breakdown in the sister act
Some of the actresses in Adam Bock’s new play The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were reading lines in a rehearsal studio when suddenly Isabella Calthorpe appeared to be in some distress.
I felt it best to keep my distance while her co-stars Claire Forlani and Alice Sanders stepped in.
How daft did I feel when Bock told me Isabella’s ‘breakdown’ was in the plot. ‘She did it on purpose,’ he said.
She joked later that she was getting upset ‘in an American accent’.
Her fellow company members, Ronke Adekoluejo, Charlotte Parry, and Patricia Potter were working with director Trip Cullman on the drama about five sisters.
Cullman said they’re the kind of haughty Upper West Side types who appear in the Style section of the New York Times.
He explained that Willow, played by Claire, ‘tragically married early and not well’.
They are ruled over by Gemma (Charlotte) who did marry into money. ‘It’s really about control, and grief,’ said Cullman who developed the play with Bock at the Sundance Institute’s drama lab.
He added that the siblings have to work out how to be human beings rather than just women who make careers out of posing and pouting and not much else.
The drama started previews last night at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, North-West London, of which I am a trustee.
Bock said the initial spark for the play happened when he saw the cover of Nick Foulkes’s book High Society: The History of America’s Upper Class, featuring David Seidner’s photo of three siblings who had married well: Pia Getty, Princess Alexandra von Furstenburg and Princess marie Chantal.
He loved the dynamic of sisters in society. even though today the idea of ‘society’ might also include the Kardashian sisters. Hey ho.