In the second act of The World's Wife, Eurydice, Orpheus' wife, issues an imperative to the audience.
"Girls, forget what you've read. It happened like this."
Live Arts' production the U.S. premiere of The World's Wife, considers legend, parables and history from the female perspective. As a spouse, Aesop was a pain (always looking before he leapt), Tiresias howled with menstrual cramps and Rip Van Winkle took Viagra -- so say their wives.
The play, a succession of dramatic monologues, ruptures the masculine narratives of myth, fiction and fable with a feminist slant. Carol Ann Duffy, a celebrated British poet and playwright, strings together theatrical pearls of stories ranging from Mrs. Darwin to Mrs. Midas.
Live Arts casts a golden touch on the play's subject matter. In the world of The World's Wife, nothing is off limits (earning it an "Adult Consent" warning).
The play creatively turns Greek myth inside out with its portrayal of Circe, the goddess who changed lost sailors into swine. She becomes a Homeric Martha Stewart on Prozac, hosting her cooking show that instructs viewers how to dice the heart and disembowel a pig.
Fairy tales are fractured -- at one point, Little Red Cap a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hood, clad à la Britney Spears, writhes in orgasmic lust as she recalls her true encounter with the Big Bad Wolf.
The psyche is analyzed as Frau Freud holds court on the male anatomy. The feminine even permeates pop culture when a blue-suede-shoed nun thrusts her pelvis and curls her lip to Gregorian chants. She's Sister Presley, Elvis' lost twin.
But not all of the sagas evoke laughter or smiles. Mrs Lazarus' poignant performance haunts the theatre as she tells of her grief, her mourning and her healing before her bridegroom violently returns. Mrs. Quasimodo convulses in agony as she recalls her husband's infidelity with Esmeralda before she destroys his beloved bells, rendering them mute.
The six superb actresses seek to infiltrate what they consider patriarchal discourse, and they subvert its uni-dimensional nature. The feminist perspective, on the contrary, is anything but quiet, meek or submissive. Instead, it's a stunning spectrum of emotions -- fevers of rage, states of melancholy, reveries of tenderness.
Live Arts imaginatively crafts its intimate setting, and the actresses make full use of the staggered stage by climbing a ladder, scaling the steps and peeking through streamers. The costumes have as much scope as their characters -- while Mrs. Herod dons an elegant emerald gown, Mrs. Kong sports a vest of thick, black gorilla fur. The tasteful music choices artfully complement the monologues, ranging from Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made For Walking" to Miles Davis' "It Never Entered My Mind."
Yet not every aspect of The World's Wife turns to gold. Some scenes, in fact, seem a little more like brass and cannot hold up next to the luster of the other tales. Although the actresses are not to blame, select stories feel too short, delicate and unexplored compared to their neighbors. The brevity of Mrs. Darwin's witty commentary and Mrs. Icarus' reflections deprives the characters of any depth. They seem fragile and flimsy, crushed beneath the weight of the surrounding sagas.
Yet, at other times, the play is too ambitious -- particularly concerning the treatment of The Devil's Wife, a.k.a. Myra Hindley, or "The Most Hated Woman in Britain," who, with her lover, was convicted of murdering two children. Unlike the other monologues, her disturbing words and chilling presence are spaced throughout the second act. This punctuation of narration diffuses the power of performance.
Carol Ann Duffy's play revolts against what she perceives to be the prevailing patriarchal discourse of history and does so with a phalanx of versatile, shape-shifting, multi-dimensional actresses. The World's Wife will enchant, enrage, inspire, sadden and delight its audience -- and these complexities render it wonderful.
Its vision, a refraction of history through feminine eyes, empowers not only the wives of this play but has the potential to empower the women of the world. Its poignancy and acerbic wit will touch men as well.
When watching The World's Wife, the audience forgets what the books have told them, remembering that the women behind famous men have their own stories to tell. In truth, their stories are much more interesting.
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