Photo courtesy of the Folger Theater.
Sometimes a character is so bad, she’s good. That can certainly be said for Kristine Nielsen, as Aunt Rene, and Elan Zafir, as Reg in The Way of the World, now on stage at the Folger Theatre. While not in lead roles, these two actors own the stage. As a woman of a certain age and a gregarious, uncouth party boy, both actors make their awkward and irritating characters not just lovable, but riotous. You can see them in this contemporary adaptation of William Congreve’s play through February 11. For tickets and information, click here.
Both Nielsen and Zafir’s characters –and the lavish lives they live– are over the top. Take the Hamptons in the summer, add a $600 million bombshell heiress and a cast of caustic, cutting ‘friends’ and over-the-top seems appropriate. This comedy of errors, part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, written and directed by Theresa Rebeck, explores the intersection of greed, misunderstanding and perception. With astronomical amounts of money, distrust rears its head– but not without humor and vast amounts of fodder for social commentary. The cast and their depictions of the effete class of the summer crowd that gathers at the Hamptons makes The Way of the World memorable and timely.
The story revolves around sweet-natured Mae (Eliza Huberth), her enormous inheritance and what it means in regards to her love life and life dreams. While her family and friends think only of the next acquisition, Mae wants to give away her fortune in Haiti. Amidst the Manolos and Gucci, she has to gall to wear Birkenstocks– if only for one scene. Mae and her estranged boyfriend Henry (Luigi Sottile) work through their issues surrounded by the absurdities and foibles of high society.
The set design –walls decorated with expensive shoes, pricey handbags and glittery baubles, and thumping party-scene music– places the viewer in the middle of a cocktail party world where status and ornamentation are everything. The cast struts around in lively costumes, similar to preening peacocks, and men’s underwear is featured prominently. Flowy, figure-flattering dresses mock the powerful force that is Aunt Rene but her insecurities and self-deprecation endear her and provide for the show’s biggest laughs. Nielsen is a master of physical comedy.
Ashley Austin Morris’s performance as the waitress demonstrates how a dramatic variation of tone and delivery can show two distinctly different experiences of one place and time. Among the 1%, here is a woman who works six jobs to pay the bills. Slight and sassy, with a naïve observer’s point of view, Morris gives us plebeians a tour of the Hamptons scene and reminds us that both the wealth gap and social media keep us from relating to one another. Her bottled enthusiasm for the world she gazes from afar is palpable and she shares that with the viewer, all while the viewer’s cynicism about the rest of the characters grows. (Alas, she, too, is bound to disappoint us. –Maria Helena Carey)
The Folger Theatre hosts Brews & Banter this Friday 1/26 at 6:30 p.m. Join a lively group for a pre-performance conversation with Henry and the waitress, and enjoy beer provided by Bluejacket for $20.