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Overcast Time travel with ‘Fashions For Men’ and ‘Abundance’
I spent a good part of last week “time traveling.” It’s a most highly recommended excursion if you focus your itinerary on a pair of unique destinations. Sharing them with you in the order I experienced the Mint’s “Fashions For Men” and Beth Henley’s haunting “Abundance” from TACT — book your tickets now for this pair of “hark backs” that offer rich insights into how the world has turned.
Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952) was a darling of American theater in the 1920s and ’30s. Renowned for his “cosmopolitan fairy tales for adults” the Hungarian playwright’s “Fashions For Men,” written in 1917, arrived in New York in 1922 — followed in 1927 by the playwright himself. While he was a “player” on both continents his venerated calling card was the result of a quick sardonic wit and a penchant for social satire — combined with sublime theatricality. The result was a playwright beloved by all — and an arbiter who not only took to task the foibles of the privileged — but also the contradictions of a climbing (sometimes clawing) middle class.
In “Fashions For Men,” which is enjoying a magnificent revival at the Mint through March 29, via the combined talents of Artistic Director Jonathan Bank—who “freshened the text a little” to elucidate the new production and director Davis McCallum — who guides a plu-perfectly cast troupe who personify the foibles of the upper crust — and the evolving fortunes of those who would scramble to join their ranks.
Save one. The proprietor of “a little shop of men’s and women’s fashions in downtown Budapest” is Peter Juhasz (loveable, memorable Joe Delafield) a gentle young man — kind to a fault — who actually not only cares for his customers — but equally for his employees. And therein lies the heart of “Fashions For Men”— where over two-plus hours in which Peter’s wife leaves him for an employee (having taken the shops income for their getaway) and the saintly owner ‘s shop is lost to bankruptcy forcing him into the employ of a financier Count (elegant Kurt Roads — to the manor born). It’s the latter who also provides employment for Peter’s nubile assistant, the lovely, uber-capable Paula (loveable Rachel Napoleon, who has very modern ideas about the road to participating in the Count’s most privileged way of life.”
Along with meeting the “upper crust” demanding clientele whose perpetual dissatisfaction keeps gentle Peter at their every whim, beck and call — and are a feisty hoot —“Fashions For Men” has one of the loveliest, most welcoming sets you’ll find on or off-Broadway (Daniel Zimmerman’s doing!); And playwright Molnar scores with the happiest of endings for all.
Beth Henley’s ‘Abundance’
In Beth Henley’s 1989 heartbreaker “Abundance” her focus was not an exploration of the foibles of her home turf — the deep South — but instead an impassioned, revelatory hark-back to the late 1860s when many East Coast young women were lured to the Wild West in response to ads for mail order bride. created on the tail of the Gold Rush. As Eastern men headed out to strike it rich there were adventures a-plenty, but no one to run the roost.
The young women who left home to seek romance and the excitement of a new frontier found it challenging at the least: Some of the unions worked remarkably well. Some did not. After Henley read a 1973 non-fiction saga of a young pioneer girl kidnapped at 13 by a Native American tribe while the girl’s family was headed to the Midwest she was inspired to investigate the plight of early pioneer women’s lives.
The result, for us now to contemplate at the intimate Beckett Theatre is a gripping, haunting Tact Company revival of “Abundance” that will open your eyes and mind to the challenges that met those pioneer women — and how they faced then. And in a play that sometimes tests the credulity of its complex take it’s fascinating to share that the events that rivet and outrage us in an era where independence has become the norm is based entirely on fact!
In “Abundance,” as envisioned by Henley, the facts are that a gentle Bess Johnson (superb Tracy Middendorf) and bright, ambitious take charge Macon Hill (Kelly McAndrew) is unforgettable and haunting in the role) strike up an immediate friendship as mail order brides. But the latter’s pioneer strengths can only take her so far in a saga where desperation and disfigurement becomes the lot for gentle young Bess. And a woman whose husband treated her like chattel, cheated on her, wouldn’t even allow her to sing (her passion) became, by the bad luck of being held captive and defiled by an Indian tribe to turn her tragedy — with the guidance of an enterprising professor — into a best-seller tell-all — becoming a thriving celebrity in a rich new world.
What becomes of the women’s longtime friendship is for you to discover at this potently moving revival, eye-opening and mind-challenging and as sad in 2015 as in 1860. Tickets at attactnyc.org or (212) 645-8228.
