Melanie Mayron, Marilu Henner, Brooke Adams, and Caroline Aaron enjoy a hilarious brunch from hell in Madwomen of the West (photo by Carol Rosegg)
MADWOMEN OF THE WEST
Actors Temple Theatre
339 West 47th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through December 31, $48.50 – $110
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The tag line for Sandra Tsing Loh’s Madwomen of the West might be “Brunch Is Hell,” but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a whole lotta fun, especially with four heavenly actresses having a blast together. The play itself, if you can even call it that, is a mess, with plot holes galore, inexplicable tangents, confusing breaks of the fourth wall, and unimaginative direction. But spending one hundred minutes with this quartet of lovely seventysomethings is wonderful.
Madwomen of the West features four delightful talents; for the uninitiated, who should know better, they are: Caroline Aaron, a regular on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel who has appeared onstage in The Iceman Cometh, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and in a bevy of films by Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Nora Ephron, Paul Mazursky, and Mike Nichols; Brooke Adams, the star of such films as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Days of Heaven and such plays as Happy Days, Key Exchange, and Lend Me a Tenor; Marilu Henner, most famous for her role as Elaine Nardo on Taxi but who has also appeared on Broadway in Gettin’ the Band Back Together, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, and Chicago and in such films as Bloodbrothers, Perfect, and L.A. Story; and Melanie Mayron, who won an Emmy for thirtysomething, appeared in such plays as Godspell, Crossing Delancey, and The Goodbye People and such indies as Girlfriends and Sticky Fingers, and has directed nearly one hundred episodes of television series and movies. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve had long crushes on three of them.
It’s Claudia’s (Mayron) birthday, and Jules (Adams) has invited her to her ritzy Brentwood mansion for a special brunch, along with Marilyn (Aaron). “Birthdays can be fraught — especially our dear friend Claudia’s,” Marilyn tells the audience. “She’s been feeling a little down — she needed a lift!” The three college friends are soon unexpectedly joined by another member of their old gang, the fabulously famous Zoe (Henner).
“Oh, for Pete’s sakes, Zoey! I’m happy for your mega-success but I haven’t read any of your books!” Marilyn declares. “I’m on this fucking sugar cleanse and I don’t know why you’ve suddenly turned up in our lives to make them look shitty when we’re just trying to mark Claudia’s sad ‘run out of condiments’ birthday and I’m just so hungry!”
College friends Jules (Brooke Adams) and Claudia (Melanie Mayron) share a happy moment at the Actors Temple Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Many of the characters’ attributes are based on the actors’ real lives. Marilyn is a growly voiced kvetcher who founded a private girls school for underrepresented minorities and has been married to Barry for thirty-five years (in actuality, Aaron teaches at HB Studio; the show begins with her telling a story about her and Shelley Winters at the Actors Temple Theatre); Zoey is a world-renowned actress and self-help guru with a perfect memory (Henner is renowned for her own memory skills and has written numerous wellness books); Claudia is a single mother and photographer who is “vaguely Jewish, vaguely lesbian” (Mayron played a Jewish photographer on thirtysomething and in Girlfriends and has twins with her ex, screenwriter Cynthia Mort); and Jules was a law partner who gave it up to start a family (the role was originally going to be played by JoBeth Williams, who was replaced by Adams in October).
Christian Fleming’s set looks like a special edition of an afternoon women’s TV chat show on location, featuring two comfy chairs, a matching couch, a large backdrop of a photo of palm trees, a piñata just waiting to be broken open, and a round, gold-plated circular table that is oddly misused. Sharon Feldstein and Erin Hirsh’s costumes do a good job helping define the four friends, with Zoe in a sexy, tight-fitting black bodysuit with a gold chain belt, Marilyn in black shirt and pants and a blue blazer, Jules in a long, elegant black Issey Miyake gown and boots, and Claudia in pajamas and sneakers. When Jules says, “No costume budget. I brought this from home,” it’s easy to believe her.
Loh, whose previous books and plays include The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones, Mother on Fire, Aliens in America, and Bad Sex with Bud Kemp, doesn’t give much of a chance for Caruso (Emojiland, Southern Comfort) to make sense of things, so the story is all over the place as the actors go in and out of character and the plot meanders. Meanwhile, the quartet’s first-wave feminism doesn’t do the show any favors as they discuss the women’s movement, Hillary Clinton, Mary Tyler Moore, motherhood, smoking, female bodies, sexual liberation, getting canceled, and what Marilyn calls the “trans wave.”
Spoiler alert: They never bust open that piñata, which is a shame.
“You really can’t have it all,” Jules says.
Maybe not, but these actors do deliver a lot of it.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]