"The Four Sisters"
The four March sisters have returned to the stage in the
latest of a succession of stage, TV, film, and even opera adaptations of Louisa
May Alcot’s 1868/1869 novel, Little Women. Loosely
based on Alcott’s own family during and soon after the Civil War, the book was
originally written for girls but quickly became a bestseller, still beloved by
both adults and children. In 1919, the character of Jo March helped ignite the
career of the great actress Katherine Cornell; it
also provided a still glowing film role for the young Katharine Hepburn in 1933.  |
| Carmen Zilles, Paola Sanchez Abreu, Maria Elena Ramirez, Kristolyn Lloyd, Kate Hamill. Photo: Matt Ross. |
Little Women’s latest incarnation arrives via what has become a reliable part of recent theatre seasons, an adaptation by actress/playwright Kate Hamill of classic 19th-century novels, in which she also plays a major role. Each adaptation enjoys playing with theatrical conventions, stays close enough to its source so that it remains clearly recognizable, takes considerable dramatic liberties, seeks opportunities for farcical overstatement, and finds contemporary feminist relevancies to exploit.
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| Kate Hamill, Carmen Zilles, Ellen Harvey, Paola Sanchez Abreu, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross. |
In Little Women, Hamill is concerned with the gender-based
expectations of its female characters. The March sisters and their mother, Marmee
(Megan Byrne, standing in for Maria Elena Ramirez at the performance I saw) are
waiting out the war in their New England home while father is away with the Union
Army. Beth (Paola Sanchez Abreu), unbearably shy, stays
indoors in her nightgown throughout, and dies young. Meg (Hamill) marries John
Brooks [sic] (Michael Crane), the tutor of Laurie (Nate Mann), the wealthy boy
next door, and has twins. Jo (Kristolyn Lloyd) is a would-be writer who struggles
with her conventional gender-identity. And Amy (Carmen Zilles), the youngest, has artistic aspirations in Alcott but is notable here mainly as a serial malapropist,
Jo even keeping a record of her mistakes (like “purist” for “puerile”).
 |
| Nate Mann, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross. |
Hamill’s rather shallow characters hew roughly to what Alcott
provided in multiple dimensions; none can be taken as a literal version of
their originals. Hamill specifically dismisses the idea of creating museum
replicas of her sources. This allows her to interject overtly contemporary
commentary and business that stick out like sore thumbs: a male authority
figure slaps a woman’s behind, a woman decries the word “hysterical” to describe
her behavior, and so on.
 |
| Kristolyn Lloyd, Paola Sanchez Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross. |
Her focus, of course, is on Jo, the emerging writer, played
according to Hamill’s demand for inclusive casting, by African-American actress
Lloyd, who turns in a feisty performance. This Jo is a woman determined to stand apart from the gender-based role
society demands. Taking the book’s emphasis on Jo’s tomboyish behavior one step
further, she appears mainly in male garb, including a top hat, suggesting what
some may see as incipient queerness, especially when she rejects the proposal
of Laurie. (He himself is given a momentary expression of gender confusion although
he ends up with Amy.) Alcott’s Jo, of course, eventually marries Professor Bhaer,
her German tutor, and lives happily ever after. Bhaer, however, is
omitted from Hamill’s version, leaving you to ponder a rather cloudy vision of
Jo’s fate.
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| Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd, Maria Elena Ramirez, Paola Sanchez Abreau, Carmen Zilles. Photo: Matt Ross. |
I’ve seen three other Hamill adaptations, two based on Jane
Austen, Sense
and Sensibility and Pride
and Prejudice, and one based on Thackeray’s Vanity
Fair. While the latter two had their strong points, none came close to the
level of theatrical delight present in Sense and Sensibility. Ditto Little
Women, which, like Pride and Prejudice, is produced by Primary
Stages.
 |
| Kate Hamill, Michael Crane. Photo: Matt Ross. |
As with Hamill’s other works, Little Women is written
to be staged within a simple, adaptable setting (well realized by Mikiko Suzuki
MacAdams), relying on easily movable period furnishings, shifted by the actors,
to suggest changing locales, and generalized period costumes (capably designed
by Valérie Thérèse Bart) that provide a sense of the times. MacAdams provides a
bilevel wooden set, placed against the Cherry Lane Theatre’s exposed brick stage
wall. A writing desk is on one side
of the upper platform, a bed (where poor Beth passes) on the other.
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| Nate Mann, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross. |
Sarna Lapine’s direction keeps things flowing crisply but allows heightened acting to mingle with more realistic expression, providing a number
of styles. She does what she can to emphasize the script’s playacting routines,
including too many mock duels with wooden swords, around which much of the
action transpires. Life in the March household is made to seem a never-ending
world of escapist fantasy conjured up by Jo’s childishly melodramatic
imagination.
 |
| Paola Sanchez Abreu, Ellen Harvey, John Lenartz, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd, Nate Mann. Photo: Matt Ross. |
This production is less prone to the kind of theatrical foolery
that marked much of the other Hamill plays. It avoids such tired tropes
as bearded men playing women with overstated costumes and wigs. Nevertheless,
in Act One of this two-hour, two-act play, the spirited tone and pace means a
loss of pathos in those scenes when it should be paramount.
 |
| Ellen Harvey, Kate Hamill, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Matt Ross. |
Not all comical exaggeration is absent, however, as we still
have some cartoonish touches, like the farcically shrieky Mrs. Mingott (Ellen
Harvey, who also plays Hannah, the servant). I kind of enjoyed the squawky parrot,
though, played by Michael Crane with birdlike movements and feathers in his
hair. My plus-one, however, couldn’t stop complaining afterward about how annoying this bird bit was.
Hamill’s Little Women fails to justify the effort required
for its new dramatization. It neither succeeds as a faithful representation of
the novel nor as a significant contribution to the dramatic literature of identity
issues. Like its depiction of Jo, it’s neither one thing nor the other.
Cherry Lane Theatre
38 Commerce St., NYC
Through June 29
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