WOMEN by Chiara Atik. Annex Theatre. July 3 at 2:15 pm, July 4 at 2:45 pm, July 5 at 4 pm, July 6 at 8:45 pm, July 8 at 4 pm, July 9 at noon. Buy tickets. Rating: NNNN
File this one under mashups I didn’t think I wanted to see but now can’t forget. Chiara Atik takes the plot of Louisa May Alcott’s 19th century classic Little Women and infuses the characters with the sensibility of Lena Dunham’s Girls.
The result, complete with perfect soundtrack, is a clever blend of timeless questions – How to find love? How to become a writer? How to make money? – and millennial generation angst. The show is funniest when the characters channel Dunham’s passive-aggressive dialogue in absurd situations, such as when Meg (Sarah Gibbons) asks the ailing Beth (Shakura Dickson) if she has an ETA for when she’s gonna die.
Directed by Seanna Kennedy, the gloriously diverse cast is mostly solid Dickson communicates different emotions with each cough, Isabel Kanaan exudes entitlement as youngest sibling Amy and Rafaela Lewis’s Jo is suitably narcissistic, articulate yet hilariously unaware of her actions’ effects. They’re almost upstaged by the gentle, slyly suggestive performance by Andrei Preda as Professor Bhaer.
