SOMETIMES LONGER WOULD BE BETTER
Anxious to have a child with the best possible genes and distrustful of sperm from anonymous donors, Gretchen (Halley Feiffer) convinces her “gold-star†lesbian partner Laura (Susan Pourfar) to seduce and get surreptitiously impregnated by Chuck (Robert Beitzel), a lawyer at Gretchen’s firm, whose wonderful daughter, Gretchen argues, is proof of his superior genes. Such is the premise of Ethan Coen’s hilarious new play Women or Nothing. Adroitly directed by David Cromer and boasting four topnotch performances, this work playfully challenges the collective illusion that we have control over ourselves and our surroundings.
Are our assumptions about cause and effect really true or are they just wishful thinking? Is the significance of good genes just another myth in the grand scheme of things? Can we construct our lives as we want or do most things happen as a result of random dumb luck? These are some of the questions Mr. Coen is asking in Women, albeit somewhat rhetorically. At least as far back as the Coen Brothers’ first film masterpiece, The Big Lebowski, he has examined the plight of individuals lost in what they had thought to be an ordered universe, one which on closer scrutiny turns out to be random, ultimately revealing itself to have a structure, at once immutable and fluid but incomprehensible to us. No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man take the exploration of this conundrum to a sublime, even mystical level, and the films themselves become portals to a dark and unknowable truth.
Women, for better or worse, is a great deal lighter, and this theme of control is explored more theoretically, as opposed to emotionally or dramatically, and more with words than with actions: Man proposes, God disposes, Mr. Coen is saying. But the excellence of Women lies in its delightful characters and its dialogue, which has the snap, power and imagination of a great boxer’s flurries. Especially enthralling are scenes II and III of this IV-scene play. The second scene centers on Laura’s clumsy attempts to get Chuck into bed. Ms. Pourfar is riveting as the socially-awkward, uptight intellectual lesbian who tries to use those qualities she thinks most valuable in her – her brutal frankness and self-analysis – to try and seduce the handsome young lawyer.
The subsequent scene features Deborah Rush in a deliciously deadpan performance as Laura’s eccentric mother Dorene, who arrives post-coitus and explains to her daughter and to Chuck how life really works. So engaging are the personages in this 105-minute show that I would have gladly spent another 105 minutes in their company, time which might have given Mr. Coen the opportunity to delve into a more serious theme which he has introduced but has left unexplored: the unforeseen consequences of unexpected intimacy.
photos by Kevin Thomas Garcia
Women or Nothing
Atlantic Theater Company at Linda Gross Theater
scheduled to end on October 13, 2013
for tickets, call 212-691-5919 or visit http://www.atlantictheater.org/