When Jack Heifner’s three-act three-hander Vanities opened in 1976, it struck a chord that had it carry on to an unexpectedly long off-Broadway run. It was the kind of 1,785-performances record that had songwriters wondering how ripe it was for musicalizing, as for instance, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Kimberly Akimbo connects these days with its added Jeanine Tesori/Lindsay-Abaire score.
Among those vigorously knocking at playwright Heifner’s door, David Kirshenbaum apparently responded to the impulse the winningest, and Vanities: The New Musical popped up in 2009 with a new final scene.
Well, musical lovers, here’s the tuner again, now as Vanities–The Musical. It’s surely pleasant enough but not so much a revival as, according to advance word, a revisal. Again, as in 2009, it extends the years – originally 1963-74 – that a trio of small-town Texas vanity owners, Kathy, Mary, and Joanne, promise eternal friendship only to strain that promise and in 1990 acknowledge the error of their ways. (Writing in 1976, Heifner understandably had a grasp on 1974 but hadn’t bothered to imagine the future.)
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
So here Kathy (Amy Keum), Mary (Jade Jones), and Joanne (Hayley Podschun) begin their triumphs and travails as high school cheerleaders rehearsing routines on November 22, 1963, a significant date to readers who know their history, which younger potential ticket buyer may not. On that historic afternoon they’re as innocent as, Heifner suggests, the times were. (It’s a later discussion why people insist on regarding previous eras as more innocent than the present. They never were.)
So, at first excited and excitable Kathy, Mary, and Joanne chat and chant on the same wavelength. As the years gang up on them, they realize the wavelength has become wobbly. Joanne, marrying longtime sweetheart Ted, is the one living the expected housewife-with-children life, uninterested in anything beyond her narrow, contented horizon.
Mary rebels against those boundaries and broadens her horizons so glaringly that while including men and women in her sex life, she expands her business life by opening a gallery specializing in pornographic art. As a matter of dramatic fact, she turns on her past so considerably that she commits a social no-no at severe odds with long-term friendship – which is as much spoiler as will be offered here.
Kathy accepts that whatever her tenuous ambitions were when graduating in 1968 (the second of Heifner’s original three scenes), they’re all pie in the sky. Somehow supporting herself, she drifts, obtaining solace by reading the books she failed to read in school. (Whether for this revisal she’s using a Kindle isn’t specified.) Burying her nose in the classics at various temporary locations, she’s making Montana the 1990 perch.
Heifner maintains that when he wrote Vanities, he was intent on examining friendships, not necessarily women’s friendships. The idea of writing a play about women interested him because most plays concentrated on men. He was undoubtedly correct, despite relative rarities like Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, August Strindberg’s The Stronger, Claire Boothe Luce’s The Women, and Dorothy Parker’s The Ladies of the Corridor.
But that was then, and this is now, when more works focusing on women have come along. (In part, thanks to him?) The effect is that the interactions between and among women, as imagined by women playwrights in many instances, have rendered both Vanities and Vanities–The Musical increasingly familiar. The Kathy-Mary-Joanne particulars notwithstanding, their alterations and altercations are somewhat less engaging than they were almost 50 years ago. More than that, the 1990 reconciliation, when the three are in their early forties, comes off as glib.
The Kirshenbaum songs enliven things, certainly as choreographed by Shannon Lewis and conducted by Deborah Abramson, but cheerful or melancholy as they may be, they don’t stick longer than they take to come and go.
Their appeal has as much to do with the Keum, Jones, and Podschun performances under Will Pomerantz’s vitalizing direction. These leading ladies – following previous Kathys, Marys, and Joannes like Kathy Bates, Stockard Channing, Lucie Arnaz, Sally Field over innumerable productions – are outstanding in all departments.
Incidentally, Heifner has also said that, unusual for most playwrights, he begins his plays by envisioning the setting. Designer James Morgan has imagined a nifty one this Vanities around. On a light blue set, he has mannikins representing changing fashions rolled on by the cast members to indicate their character’s changing selves. There are no vanity tables but, yes, the occasional mirror. (Costumer Barbara Erin Delo sees to the mannikins’ attire, while keeping Kathy, Mary and Joanne in basic black throughout.)
Watching Vanities–The Musical today, a reviewer can’t be blamed for wondering whether a cultural sea change Heifner wouldn’t have envisioned in 1976 could cause questioning half a century on. In 2023 might a male playwright creating a three-female-characters work rouse the Politically Correct squad? Let’s hope not, and that his still entertaining piece sings on.
Vanities–The Musical opened March 30, 2023, at the Theatre at St. Jeans and runs through April 22. Tickets and information: yorktheatre.org
