On the Saturday night performance of “Women in Jeopardy!” at Geva Theatre Center’s Mainstage,
cast member Scott Rad Brown (Trenner) led a small
Q&A before the show. “Comedy depends upon its audience,” he said. “Let us
know how we’re doing,” adding after a beat, “So laugh.”
In live
productions, especially, laughter isn’t easy to come by; every joke that hits
is an earned reward. Playwrights, directors, and actors spend hours rewriting
and tweaking beats, words, or mannerisms. Comedy is like research science, with
hypotheses that must contrive what can’t be faked: the surprise of laughter.
Taking all
of this into account then, “Women in Jeopardy!” is a damn winner. The audience
roared — big time. “Women in Jeopardy!” is certainly well-tuned: a farcical
comedy that somehow manages to feel both familiar and innovative.
The script
comes from the immensely talented (and Rochester-born) Wendy MacLeod, who hasn’t
produced a work in Rochester since her last run at Geva
in the early 1990’s. The Yale School of Drama graduate has kept herself busy.
Currently, she’s a Playwright-in-Residence at Kenyon College, and also serves
as the Artistic Director of the Kenyon Playwrights Conference. Her many
charismatic plays (“Sin,” “Schoolgirl Figure,” “Juvenilia”) have opened to
world-wide audiences. And notably, she’s had success in Hollywood when her
play, “The House of Yes,” was adapted by Miramax into a film starring Parker
Posey. “Women in Jeopardy!” continues MacLeod’s spirit of witty and satirical,
female-centric humor.
The story begins
in the kitchen, where the bulk of the play is set. It’s a clever, subtle
subversion by MacLeod of a Victorian-era drawing-room play — instead of a
living room, the kitchen serves as the anchor. Mary (Jennifer Cody) and Jo
(Julia Brothers) are two divorced 40-somethings who have briefly escaped the
living room under the pretense of refilling their wine glasses. Quickly, the
two turn to private chatter: Their friend Liz (Laurie Wells) has brought over
her sketchy new boyfriend, Jackson (Liam Craig), a dentist. He’s depressed and
“in need of company,” says Liz, who eventually joins Mary and Jo in the kitchen.
She explains that Jackson’s dental hygienist has recently disappeared under
suspicious circumstances and, worse, the cops suspect Jackson was involved.
It’s a brilliant set-up. When Jackson
enters the kitchen, the audience doesn’t see a remorseful, scared man, as
assumptions prompt. Instead, Jackson shoots through the doors with a libido
that barks and howls; inappropriately, he makes jokes about his disappeared
assistant, and in the process, he raises more red flags than a used car lot on
Labor Day. Mary and Jo are in a bind: How do they break it to Liz — who’s
blissfully head-over-hills — that her new boyfriend is probably a serial
killer? Worse, how will they keep Liz’s oblivious 19 year-old daughter from
spending time alone with Jackson? Worse yet, the fun-run is on Saturday.
From there
the comedy explodes.
At times
“Women in Jeopardy!” is so wild the plot and mystery of “Is Jackson a serial
killer?” takes a back seat any chance it can to favor the slapstick or
farcical. Occasionally, the play confuses itself for a raunchy, old-school
Restoration Comedy — à la Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s
“The School for Scandal” — but director Sean Daniels regains control, reigning
it in with a unique voice during his vibrant scene changes.
The point of
every scene, of course, is to set up jokes. Mary, Jo, and Liz’s scheming
engenders an abundance of aging-women one-liners: “Women don’t kill strangers,
they kill husbands”; “I’m experiencing a renaissance of my nether-regions”; “I
think, maybe, I need some more wine.” There’s Bundt cake jabs and quips at New
Balance sneakers. There’s laughter at Mary’s elevated flirting as she meets a
new man, not because of her age or social status, but because her transparency
is so potent that we have no choice but to laugh — we all know those moments.
If you look
behind the laughs, though, there is a conversation MacLeod is looking to have
about the tropes and stereotypes of women-centric casts. But she leaves the
work up to us. This is refreshing, ultimately. The job of this play is not to
make any large sweeping statements, or to embed ideologies; rather, “Women in
Jeopardy!” inspires conversation through its laughter.
At its
heart, “Women in Jeopardy!” is comedy gold. It borrows little bits from
everything that’s come before it, but the result is refreshing and original,
and somehow, the laughter comes easy.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2015.
