Uncommon Women And Others

[May 23rd, 2007] It isn't often you see a show that calls for a cast of nine women. It's even less common to find one that isn't written by a male playwright trying to compensate for the marginalization of women in the theater with tired speeches about empowerment. The late, great Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others, Profile Theatre Project's last full production of their season of her work, neatly avoids the most common pratfalls of "plays for women" (a hateful, demeaning moniker). An episodic retelling of one year in the lives of seven seniors and one freshman at Mount Holyoke College in the early '70s, it is a smart, entertaining show about the terrifying transition from academic life to reality.

Originally produced as Wasserstein's master's thesis at Yale, Uncommon Women is obviously the work of a young playwright—it features copious obscenities, frank sexuality and the myopic world view of a recent graduate—and seems to suffer from an uncertainty of purpose not found in the author's later work. Nonetheless, Wasserstein's dialogue is smart and funny, her characters are complex and likable, and even the insertion of herself into the text as Holly Kaplan (Amanda Soden), a nervous, redheaded Jewish girl with a ravenous appetite and a thing for her fur coat, is forgivable.

Director Julie Akers assembled a remarkably talented ensemble of local actresses for this production, including Val Landrum as Rita, a sex-obsessed and directionless would-be writer, and Laura Faye Smith as Leilah, a nervous, hardworking student who turns to anthropology as an escape from a culture she finds stifling. There's not a weak link to be found in the ensemble, who trade barbs and reminiscences on a refreshingly minimalist (and nicely lit) set.

The play's accessibility is unfortunately limited by its subject matter. To a middle-class, West Coast boy, the rituals and traditions of stuffy Mount Holyoke are as foreign as the mythology of the Guaraní, and the troubles of promiscuous, neurotic rich kids seem, well, not all that troublesome. But despite the class divide between the characters and the Portland audience, the play's central concerns are universal. Even among the rich and privileged, the uncertainty of joining the adult world is enormous and frightening, and the questions facing the Mount Holyoke women circa 1973—whether to get married right away, whether a satisfying career was worth sacrificing family life, and what the hell to do with themselves after commencement—aren't all that different from the ones all graduates, male and female alike, grapple with today.