Enraged by Their Times, Women of Ambition Seize the Stage

Janet McTeer is terrific in Ozark.

thanks for your writing....... brilliant.

I was jailed three times for showing my feelings. I was also labeled a “functional sociopath” by the city prosecutor. I’ve been called every name used to denigrate women, including “a bad mother.” As a result I took to publishing books in order to be heard. Even then I had to deal with a contingent who hacked Amazon and raised the price of one of my books to $199.95 and posted hate notices to keep the book from circulating. What was I writing about? Life with an adult on the autism spectrum.

But why are women not allowed to seize being the director of these productions?? Why are they being directed again and again by white males?? There is not much hope for women until they can have equal access to the top positions of power both in theater and in life.

At last the Times has a smart female theater critic on its staff. I think I speak for many women in NYC when I say that we are all tired of reading (white) male critics' perspective of the world. No matter how "sensitive" these critics may be, they will never see the world through a woman's perspective. This review shows us what we've all been missing.

For so long the NY Times dismissed plays like these as unworthy of newspace and the major theatres threw plays written by women into a pile with no response and that very much includes all the theatre companies having critical success with these remarkable plays. It makes me sad all the brilliant voices that were not encouraged in the last 10 years of American theatre. I think these theatre companies and their misogynistic male and female artistic directors need to make a public apology for openly discriminating against women playwrights and for choosing plays always in the male point of view.

While I appreciated the writing and incite of this article, I was left wondering why the three women featured are all white. Aren't there women of color performing in New York right now who are also exploring these issues? If not, what does that say about our Times?

And don't forget Jen Silverman's "Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties" at MCC! Those wonderful actors took their rage and reclaimed joy. It was pure alchemy.

Uplifting omnibus review. Now if Audible would publish these plays I could enjoy them [sort of] live, because I will never get to see them all live in NYC. Or probably anywhere. I would DIE to see Edi Falco as Polly Noonan.

There is reference here to themes that are “viscerally relevant” to current events. I disagree. All of these plays dwell on, and take place in, the past. The lives of women have evolved significantly in the last forty years. Our daughters cannot imagine the restrictions that our mothers were subjected to. We do ourselves a collective disservice to measure decades old behaviors against today’s standards. In order to progress we need to live in today, not yesterday.

Politics has been part of theater since... well, the Greeks. But today politics is not part of... it has taken over theater/film/TV for that matter. And it's blatant. And it's about the"resistance" And sad to say a job fair for those who feel wronged.. The problem with Bernhardt/Hamlet(the only play of those mentioned that I saw) is the play isn't that good. And the issue(s) of gender seem to be ripped from the current headlines and end up.. not even as illuminating/probing as a news article. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams were 2 of the best political writers of the 20h century. Think of Glass Menagerie and the problematic Tom and Laura - two people who are different... yearning to be accepted for who they are(gay and disabled). And the mother Amanda who fights anyway she can(however misguided at times) to keep the family alive/together during the Depression. What a great political statement. And no lecture. No competition with the current news... A true classic. A play that is relevant/political eternally. And a lesson to any writer on how to write a "political" play.

Thank you for pulling together these three shows, each with bravura performances. I've seen them and Gloria with Christine Lahti about Gloria Steinhem's career. You could add the latter to the thematic rumination on what it means to be an American woman. The one moment of hope for me came at the end of Schreck's show, when she features a young woman debater. Maybe there's a future after all.

We won't all get to see these plays but sometimes your local library will have the script to read or buy them. Read these plays and tell people about these plays. Our local Colleges and High Schools need these plays to read or present. It is a great review. Thank you for presenting these thoughts to us.

I don’t understand why, in a small theater, actors in a play, who do not have to project over an orchestra to the far reaches of a large auditorium, must be miced. Aren’t they actors? The amplification in “Bernhardt/Hamlet made it quite difficult to understand the words.

agree this is a masterful review, thank you for finding the thematic threads but most of all the provocative power of theater to bring history into the present, a gathering to witness and reflect, and the urge to do exactly what you so well describe when you took a gulp as the 15 year old character talks about the Constitutional in relation to women, steps into her 40ish self and drops the sweet pleasing. In other words, steps into the now, and the genuflecting, big mouth, double standard will go the way of other oppressions. You brought the reader to the moment as I suspect the actress did to the audience. The gong of recognition, instant transformation that makes art so delicious.

What a masterful review. I’ll never see these performances, but this itself was enriching. Thank you.

A beautiful, disturbing, and insightful essay on three productions I would give my right arm to see. Thank you not just to the brilliant critic who chose to address the themes they share but to the great actors, the playwrights, and the many others who have put them onstage, where we can witness and respond to the truths they present.

"In the row behind me, a woman wept deep, grieving tears — a kind of crying so suffused with pain that we’re not used to hearing it in public, even in a darkened theater. But this is not an ordinary time." I could not read this without having a visceral response myself. Oh, how I wish this weeping woman well.

This article and its focus are brilliant. Thank you so much for writing this.

It is such a travesty that brilliant works like these are only accessible to the those who are either local or highly mobile and who can afford all the costs involved. What of the rest of us?

I can't tell if it's been a concerted effort, but since I now gather many of the reviewers see a lot of shows where they don't write the opening night review (I figured that out from the Jukebox Musical roundtable, then binging on old Theater Talks), this has been wonderful to more often get a second discussion of a major work. This actually has been feeling even more interesting than the years-ago daily critic and the Sunday critic approach back in the day, which was a consistent approach and left some oddities. (Strangely, 20 years later, my memory of a show held in infamy like "Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public," nicely received as silly fun on the weekend but decidedly had not been on the pre-internet day-after-opening paper, starts leaning to recalling the show's good points, with us knowing in 2018 that the 1994 show was to be Tommy Tune's last full Broadway staging - at least so far.). Back then, the new American musical felt so hard to get produced that the Hellinger being sold seemed pretty logical, as crazy as it seems now; and "Guys and Dolls" hadn't yet proven what a revival can be as a cash-generator. With so many notable openings, and investment clearly flowing as investors seem to enjoy speculating and seem to accept full write-off losses more easily, hoping to be "in" on an exciting premium smash, it's great that time is being taken for the double-coverage. And a reason to check the Theater page, because you never knew what might be there!

Unfortunately for me, I missed the opportunity to see “What the Constitution Means to Me” while it played at Berkeley Rep. With a better description, the play could have been made to sound more relevant to the currently kaleidoscopic hall-of-mirrors times we’re living through.