Christopher Columbus! Purists expecting to get a conventional stage version of Little Women are likely to get their crinolines in a twist over Kate Hamill’s fresh take on Louise May Alcott’s 1869 classic.
Hamill, who did so splendidly by Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, among other vintage novels that she has dramatized in recent seasons, invests the characters in her trim adaptation of Little Women with something of a modern feminist attitude.
In her production notes, Hamill insists that the play should be cast in an inclusive fashion to reflect present-day America. Accordingly, some of the roles in this Primary Stages premiere are performed by people of color. Retaining the original’s Civil War period and some of its plot, the playwright shapes the dialogue as relatively terse exchanges and sharpens the attributes of the four March sisters.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★ review here.]
Headstrong as ever, Jo (Kristolyn Lloyd) is depicted as assertive to the point of being obnoxious as she generally swaggers through her scenes in a masculine state of mind, usually sporting trousers and not infrequently the mustache she affects for those attic melodramas she enacts.
Wearing spectacles, Meg (Hamill) initially seems quite the prim lady, but the drudgery she eventually assumes as a married mom later culminates in a roaring meltdown of frustration.
Pretty in pink, a preening Amy (Carmen Zilles) is a pragmatic, even predatory, creature who almost immediately sets her sights on the rich boy next door.
Barefoot in the nightgown she continually wears, Beth (Paola Sanchez Abreu) is the frail peacemaker who persistently urges Jo to “write something real from your life.”
Of course there is the ever-patient Marmie (Maria Elena Ramirez), crusty old Aunt March (Ramirez), and the plainspoken Irish housekeeper (Ellen Harvey).
Just as in the novel, the menfolk are not as interesting figures as the women, much as Hamill twiddles with their characters. Jo’s longtime admirer Laurie (Nate Mann) frankly admits that he’d “rather be a girl than a boy.” His tutor, Brooks (Michael Crane), who later weds Meg, is depicted as something of a stiff. The sisters’ father (John Lenartz) returns home so obviously battered by the war that he never utters a word.
Not incidentally, the playwright ends this version of the tale before Jo meets up with Professor Bhaer; a decision likely to please those readers who never approved of the match Alcott made for her heroine.
Opening on Tuesday at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Little Women unfolds upon a two-level set of bare timbers and planks that sometimes is softened by lace curtains. Pieces of furniture are moved about by the actors as necessary.
Director Sarna Lapine’s austere approach to the visuals, which includes modest approximations of Victorian dress that the characters do not change as several years go by, becomes Hamill’s uncluttered retelling of the story. Lapine paces the actors at a fairly brisk clip and the two-act show runs only slightly more than two hours.
It’s interesting to note that compared to her versions of Sense and Sensibility and Vanity Fair, which feature surreal sequences, Hamill’s adaptation of Little Women—for all of its contemporary attitudes and talk—is a relatively straightforward interpretation of the novel.
The one exception is a fanciful scene during which Jo, Amy, and crabby Aunt March huddle upon a settee and bicker, while the old lady’s pet parrot (Crane) loudly caws and snuffles in counterpoint to their squabbling. This funny interlude proves to be a highlight of the show in its colorful contrast against the extremely plain circumstances of Hamill’s dramatization.
Little Women opened June 4, 2019, at the Cherry Lane Theatre and runs through June 29. Tickets and information: primarystages.org
