Kellie Overbey, Emily Walton, Beatrice Tulchin, and Shannon Harrington
                                                                                                 Photo: Richard Termine.

                                By Marc Miller 

 

The title Women Without Men evokes one of those 1950s women's-prison melodramas, where Hope Emerson terrorizes Eleanor Parker or Ida Lupino bats Phyllis Thaxter around, while Agnes Moorehead or Howard Duff look helplessly on. Hazel Ellis's 1938 drama, as revived by the Mint Theater Company, is hardly that genre, but it does summon some of the same cat-fighting emotions. Ellis, an Irish actor-turned-dramatist who penned two well-reviewed plays and abruptly stopped writing, is concerned with the pent-up feelings, natural rivalries, and destructive behaviors of women amongst themselves, in this case the teachers and administrators at Malyn Park, a Protestant girls' private school well outside Dublin. They're a frustrated bunch, and Ellis gives generous voice to their petty jealousies and dead-end careers. Unfortunately, she doesn't do much else. The Mint, which specializes in rediscovering forgotten plays, does a well-nigh flawless job with this one. The trouble is, the characters are such unpleasant company. And Ellis's diagnosis of what these women need and lack--in a word, men--is highly debatable.

 

You may be reminded of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, with troubled teachers battling deceitful little brats, or even Stage Door, with its mostly-girl cast trading wisecracks in a confined environment. Here that environment is the teachers’ sitting room, in Vicki R. Davis’s nicely shabby-genteel design, where it’s the first day of term and the veterans on the staff are about to give a formidable hazing to the new face.

 

Emily Walton and Kellie Overbey 

 

That’s Jean Wade (Emily Walton), barely out of school herself, assigned to English and history, and dewily optimistic and effusive in a way that any first-year drama student would know is about to be tested. Miss Strong (Mary Bacon, in a Cherry Jones sort of part) is straightforward yet enigmatic, cynical and unsparingly critical of those around her. Miss Willoughby (Aedin Moloney) is pouty and self-sabotaging, one who sees herself as a victim and everyone else as an enemy. Miss Ridgeway (Kate Middleton) is at least vivacious, given to primping and doing the Big Apple, but similarly pessimistic and suspicious. Mademoiselle Vernier (Dee Pelletier) also feels victimized by everyone, and her birdlike manner masks a lifetime of regret. And Miss Connor (Kelly Overbey) is a real terror: She started teaching early, never developed any other identity, is unfailingly harsh with her pupils, and has pinned whatever hopes she has on the “history of beauty” she’s been writing for 20 years. The headmistress, Mrs. Newcome (Joyce Cohen), thinks the worst of everyone, stints on praise, and doesn’t bend rules.

 

The staff is, in short, not merry company. They get into pointless arguments, snipe behind each other’s backs, and are as quick to indict as they are slow to forgive. The rainy Irish landscape exacerbates their moodiness, and the girls, led by smart, crafty Peggy (Alexa Shae Niziak), have no viable role models among the faculty—save for Jean, who in this environment won’t stay so sunny for long.

 

 

Shannon Harrington, Beatrice Tulchin, and Alexa Shae Niziak 

 

Ellis knows how to fashion a well-made play. She subtly points up the differences among the faculty, and she drops the Act One curtain on a crisis that guarantees you’ll come back for Act Two. It’s just such a dreary, oppressive setting; there’s so little kindness onstage, and the talk is so small, and frequently vindictive. The company plays it brilliantly: Under Jenn Thompson’s sure direction, each actor gets to shine, even Matron (Amelia White), who does little but sew and belittle. In a cast this excellent. it’s hard to know whom to single out, but Overbey’s Miss Connor goes harrowingly from self-possessed to acid-tongued to panicky, and Moloney’s Miss Willoughby is a fascinating horror, vicious and small-minded, one who lives to accuse. The women are trapped: Irish ladies of this era had few life choices beyond marry or pursue an unrewarding career, and their options were further limited by the 1937 Catholic Constitution, presumably part of what Ellis was ranting about, in a sea of Catholic official dogma as established by the Irish Free State with its stated requirements: if you’re lucky enough to be a married female, you have no right to hold a job, or serve on a jury.

 

She seems to come down firmly on the side of marrying: Jean is the only teacher with a beau, and, it turns out, the only one who’ll be able to escape this crushing existence, because her fella is there to rescue her. Maybe conditions really were that dire, but it’s a curiously anti-feminist perspective that sends one out on an uncertain note: Are men truly the only cure for unfulfilled women?

 

The Mint, happily evicted from its unglamorous home in an office building on West 43^rd, has taken up temporary residence at Stage II at City Center, and it’s a snug fit. Before it settles into its next permanent home, which hasn’t been announced yet, let’s pause to thank this indispensable company once more for its superlative efforts in bringing back forgotten plays. Women Without Men, however, while it may not deserve to be forgotten, isn’t one of the Mint’s more thrilling rediscoveries. These women are trying company for two hours. Heaven knows how they’d survive a whole semester of one another.

 

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission.

 

Women Without Men plays through Mar. 26 at New York City Center Stage II, 131 W. 55^th Street. For tickets, visit http://www.nycitycenter.org/tickets/productionNew.aspx?performanceNumber=9626#.VsoXAI-cGhd