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Boston Marriage at 7 Stages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
”Boston Marriage.” Through April 3. The verdict: A wickedly wordy drawing-room comedy.
Forget the bouquets. “Boston Marriage” is said to be a Victorian-era euphemism describing a monogamous, and uncelebrated, relationship between two women of certain means and sexual preference.
In David Mamet’s funny, exhilaratingly verbose play of the same name — now receiving a seductive and spirited production at 7 Stages — the title arrangement between the two main characters is rocked at the outset by a pair of developments: Anna (imperiously hilarious Shelly McCook) has taken up with a male “protector” for financial reasons, while Claire (tempting second fiddle Mary Emily O’Bradovich) has fallen for a pretty young lady. Adding to the indignity, Claire wishes to conduct her wooing in the “respectable” refuge of Anna’s home.
Set in turn-of-the-20th century Boston, it all sounds so very — how should we say it? — unMamet-like.
After all, the playwright is famous for his corrosive, rat-a-tat portraits of modern-male desperation (“American Buffalo,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”). So what is he doing raising his pinky and cavorting with Beacon Hill’s tea-and-strumpet circle in the days when the city was a hotbed of women’s suffrage?
Just having some fun, it turns out, lifting the fig leaf of propriety.
“Boston Marriage,” which made its world premiere in 1999, may be set in the fragile, decorous milieu of Henry James, rich with elegant airs, Biblical references, Basque proverbs and dense vocabulary. Yet underneath you can sense Mamet dancing on the cushions in delight as he constructs his house of parlor games and punctures a world of stifling gender stereotypes, class animosity and ethnic prejudice.
It’s not all done through high-flown language, either. His characters talk candidly of sensual matters and he throws in some four-letter words, too, lest you forget whose work you’re watching. And for a few minutes, you might. At least until he begins with the comic sexual allusions to a certain item of winter outerwear. (You figure it out.)
Initially, the heavy wordplay threatens to turn this chamber comedy — three characters, 90 minutes, no intermission — into a chilly exercise in intellectual showmanship; some theaters have included a glossary in the program notes. But the 7 Stages production, a regional premiere handsomely directed by Joe Gfaller, does not take long to warm up to. If all the drawing-room philosophizing smacks of self-indulgence and lacks emotional depth, the play keeps its message in clear context.
Suspense (and laughs) are built through an O. Henry-ish plot twist involving an emerald necklace; a goofy seance idea that seems headed for Woody Allen country; and the mysterious question of who’s playing whom, and for not unsentimental reasons.
Ultimately, though, it’s the tart-tongued McCook who makes this “Boston Marriage” worth the RSVP. With her upswept hair, high-necked collar and studied virulence, Anna not only embodies the perpetually insulted look of faded beauty, she’s an erupting volcano of vitriol. “Can you not conceive of a world above your waist?,” she demands of the smitten Claire.
Her nastiest remarks, however, are reserved for the servant stripe, in the person of her maid (Katie Merritt), a poor put-upon lass from Scotland. Or maybe it’s Ireland. “All is confusion at the water hole,” Anna deadpans.
In the end, of course, this threesome occupies more similar circumstances than they may care to admit. “Men live to be deceived,” Anna says. “They would rather be deceived than sated. We shall prevail.”
At 7 Stages, at least, there’s little question about that.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 5 p.m. Sunday; 10 a.m. March 24 and 31; 2 p.m. Saturday; 5:30 p.m. March 23 and 30. Through April 3. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.7stages.org.
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