A woman’s view of the world
“I like plays that have strong female characters,” says Nicholas Murphy.
The artistic director of Cornerstone Theatre Company proves that when he opens “The Women” this Thursday at Sanford’s Princess Theater.
In “The Women,” 25 actresses — some playing multiple roles — bring to life the gossip-fueled world of Manhattan socialites and wannabes. Clare Boothe Luce wrote the satirically biting comedy in 1936, but Murphy sees the characters in modern terms.
“These archetypes, with their social climbing, sleeping around and cattiness … they’re like the ‘Real Housewives’ women on TV now,” he says. “Clare wrote it as a mockery of these women, but we’re trying to make them seem like real people, too.”
Luce had a storied career: Playwright, journalist, House of Representatives member and the first woman to hold a major ambassadorial post, to Italy. She later served on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and in 1983 became the first female member of Congress to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 1987.
Along with her political achievements, she is best remembered today for her wit, which permeated her writing as well as her speech. “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable,” she once famously said, and she is often credited with coining the phrase “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Of “The Women,” with its characters who take from society rather than help improve it, she later remarked, “The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with.”
Local actress Missie Jordan has found a way to relate to her character of Mary, who’s unhappily getting divorced.
“Even though in the beginning, people might look at her like she’s a doormat, her vision of marriage and family matches mine,” Jordan said. “She wears her heart on her sleeve, she sees the good in everybody.”
Although the play is set in a very particular time and place, Jordan thinks theatergoers will easily relate to the characters.
“Women will definitely see parts of themselves, their friends, moms,” Jordan says. “I think there will be a lot of places where people will think, ‘I know someone like that.’” Staging the play has its challenges. “It’s not done very often because it’s such a big show,” Murphy says. “All those costumes, and then each scene is set in a completely different location.”
Murphy has filled the Princess Theater with a 54-foot-long set that contains a turntable to help with set changes. For this production, a section of the theater’s seats will be removed to make room for a dressing area for the cast.
“We’re going to have to run it like a fashion show, really,” he says of the backstage costume changes. “There will be a person in charge of the costume rack and hopefully it will run like a machine. It’s for sure a complex backstage.”
To find so many female actors, Murphy had two rounds of auditions. Cast members, who range from age 11 into their 60s, come from six Florida counties: Lake, Seminole, Orange, Osceola, Volusia and Hillsborough.
Jordan, who performs with MicheLee Puppets and has worked at Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition on Orlando’s International Drive, drives an hour to rehearsal from her home in the Deer Island community near Clermont.
It’s worth the effort, she says, to be part of such an interesting female-centric play: “I’m sure it’s going to make women think.”