By William Wolf

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN  Send This Review to a Friend

In yet another discovery, the Mint Theater has unearthed the 1938 play “Women Without Men” by Irish writer Hazel Ellis, who died in 1986, set in a private Protestant all girls’ boarding school in Ireland. The drama is now getting a belated American premiere, and the result is a quality production with a very convincing cast that makes the playwright’s character assortment come vividly alive under the sharp direction by Jenn Thompson.

Vicki R. Davis has created a believable, intimate set for the teacher’s lounge that provides the gladiatorial space in which staff members at odds with each other quarrel and maneuver under a stern headmistress. Ellis gives us a portrait of a dead-end place to work for those mostly doomed to lives as spinsters.

A bright gleam of light arrives in the person of enthusiastic new teacher Jean Wade, played with friendly optimism by excellent Emily Walton. She soon becomes disillusioned by the atmosphere she encounters. An immediate nemesis is Miss Connor, a hostile teacher leading a tragic life and played very convincingly by Kellie Overbey. Charged with family support duties, she has been laboring on a book for 20 years without seeing its completion, and while one might look upon her as a character to be pitied, she is so mean-spirited and conniving, that one cannot find much sympathy for her despite Overbey’s complex performance highlighted by a particularly dramatic plea for understanding.

The author sets up a melodramatic plot in which Wade is accused of a destructive act, students are treated shabbily and a resolution is contrived to resolve a problem with secrecy. Meanwhile, the situation at the school is dissected and exposed, as is the plight of the various women who labor there. As the title implies, men are indeed absent in all of the lives, save for Wade.

The cast members who portray the collections of staff and students are all terrific, making up an effective ensemble that includes Mary Bacon, Kate Middleton, Dee Pelletier, Joyce Cohen, Aedin Moloney, Amelia White, Beatrice Tulchin, Shannon Harrington and Alexa Shae Niziak.

As the drama gathers force, everyone seems so very real, and so do the situations that the author sets up to provide insight into this type of education system that provides the opportunity for a livelihood for women but also constitutions a restriction on where their lives can go to provide happiness beyond the classroom walls. “Women Behind Men” is well worth having been discovered and offered here. At City Center Stage II, 131 West 55th Street. Reviewed February 26, 2016.

  

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