ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID…SEVER THE BRIDE
In 2000, screenwriter Alan Ball won an Oscar for his hit screenplay American Beauty, followed by his powerfully edgy HBO series Six Feet Under and the Emmy-winning series True Blood. To reach this apex, his storytelling career had to start somewhere and that initiation, in 1993, was the dramedy play Five Women Wearing the Same Dress.
Tracy, the never-seen demanding Tennessee bride, has assembled an odd mix of women to stand beside her, and appears to have taken perverse pleasure in choosing a frumpy, 1950s-style dress for all five of her bridesmaids; one of them grumbles that she did it to make herself look better by comparison. While Tracy and Scott’s backyard wedding reception rolls on “downstairs”, the actual setting for Ball’s play is an upstairs bedroom that the bride’s gruff, pothead sister Meredith (Katy Carter) retreats to. Meredith would clearly be more at home in a black leather jacket than a gown. Coming in and out of her room, we have a constant parade of bridesmaids, all needing a break from the pressures downstairs.
Eventually, this wedding party escape zone hosts not just Meredith, but all four of the mismatched women: Georgeanne (Jamie Feinstein) whose friendship with the bride was strained by her having slept with Tracy’s ex-boyfriend; Trisha (Nicki Barnes), an estranged friend who isn’t into weddings at all because she’s feeling done with men for now; Mindy (Josalyn Johnson), the groom’s sister, who feels alienated from the experience as a barely-tolerated lesbian; and Frances (Dani Ucman), the Christian cousin who is offended by just about everything coming out of the mouths of the other four.
The Breakfast Club-like environment of random personalities being thrown together lends itself nicely to Ball scripting alliances, tension, and confrontations, as they all try to figure out their place as women in 1990s society, where being a perfect bride suits few but being boldly oneself yields criticism.
While there are many good moments, the problem with the script is that it feels disjointed. There’s too much genuine drama for it to be a pure comedy, but the serious moments feel very episodic, as if we were watching a whole season of Designing Women crammed into two hours. In addition, the humor is uneven; there are absolutely occasional moments of laughing out loud, but conversely quite a few rather corny lines as well. Good delivery in almost every case from the five women under Teri Brown’s direction can’t change the fact that Ball’s first big attempt at script is just good, not great.
My female companion added a perspective that I could not: “This felt like what someone might think women talk about and act like when they’re together. But it missed the mark. It’s the old trope of thinking all women do is talk about men and sex and act a bit desperate and repressed at all times. And that’s just not accurate.”
In the end, Lamplighters has staged an enjoyable, feel-good production, if not one with as remarkable writing as some of their other recent endeavors.
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Lamplighters Community Theatre, 5915 Severin Drive
Fri and Sat at 8; Sun at 2
ends on March 24, 2024
for tickets ($21-$26), call 619.303.5092 or visit Lamplighters
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I miss the days when critics actually offered a critical review, not just a regurgitation of what anyone can find on Wikipedia and the theater’s website. Even then, this review doesn’t list the whole cast, like they didn’t watch the whole show.
I will say that I watched the show opening night and had a blast. It was a little warm in the theater, but people were falling out of their seats laughing. Regardless of some of the jokes not aging well, the cast delivered on a comedy that tried to bring messages to the stage about tolerance and sisterhood.
I’m confused, Jim. You want a critical review, and yet you tell us that “people were falling out of their seats laughing.” Is that right? And you fault Mr. Shapiro for lousy reporting?