Esteemed novelist/essayist Zadie Smith is having a bit of fun in this, her first play, a Chaucer modernization incubated on her home turf at the Kiln Theatre in Willesden (a North West London neighborhood known for its cultural diversity). Before New York, the production touched down briefly at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre. Bold, multicultural, and handsomely produced, it seems a shoo-in for an eventual ascent to Broadway. It’s also great fun.
The setting is a rather posh pub (design by Robert Jones), where the regulars have been invited to participate in a low-key Moth-type contest, for the prize of a full English breakfast. All too quickly, the truly hopeless contenders are shooed off (forfeiting a potentially rich lode of humor), and then it’s the Wife’s time to seize the spotlight. Seize it she does, in the seemingly tireless personage of Clare Perkins portraying Alvita, a midde-aged Jamaican-born force of nature. Raspy-voiced, physically uninhibited, Perkins is a knockout from the get-go. But does the bawdy serial-wife require an hour of mostly monologue to convince us that she really, really likes sex?
This wife is not only very lusty but also somewhat repetitive. Initially, it’s fun to watch Alvita spar with her ultra-religious Aunty P (Ellen Thomas, lending a stock character type extra pepper). To cap one argument, Alvita executes an expository sideways kick. At 54 – the age she not only admits to, but brags about – Alvita is impressively limber, in the mode of Molly Shannon’s “Sally O’Malley” on Saturday Night Live.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
In addition to Aunty P, Alvita has several other semi-killjoys to deal with, such as the vacillating St. Paul (Andrew Frame, haloed with a serving tray) and “Black Jesus” himself (Marcus Adolphy with cascading locks, similarly framed). Mostly she’s busy recapping her five marriages. This thorough and convincing apologia pro vita sua, with its spousal synopses packed with set-tos, can get a bit static (relatively speaking), but the tales do serve to bolster Alvita’s argument that by rights men ought to worship their wives.
Unexpectedly (unless you know your Chaucer), the scene shifts to storytelling mode, and the stage morphs into a spooky swamp in early 18th-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, where the mythic rebel Queen Nanny (Jessica Murrain) promises to liberate a young soldier (Troy Glasgow) facing a death sentence for rape – on one condition: that he embark on a year-long quest to answer a riddle. “You’ll live – if you can tell me what we feel – I mean we women. What we most desire.”
The stakes are suddenly higher, the atmosphere richer. With the deadline fast approaching, the Young Maroon approaches an “Old Wife” (Thomas) who looks like something coughed up from a storm drain (great costuming all around by Jones). She’ll provide the answer – for a price. If you’re at all familiar with global folklore, you can guess what that might be.
To extract the prevailing argument promoted in both segments, The Wife in essence espouses the view that men ought to respect their wives to the point of allowing women to rule the roost. But hold up: Is male capitulation what we’ve have been fighting for, going on millennia? Most of us, I’d venture, would be content with equality and mutual respect. In that case, what to do with this tried-and-true comedic trope, dating back to Molière, commedia, and beyond?
In this instance, the best response might be to sit back and enjoy it as the playwright goes her clever, merry way.
