Margaret (Chani Reese), Sarah (Rachel Ravel), Abby (Livvy Marcus), and Emma (Mia Fowler) toil away day after day in 1917 reformatory (photo by Nina Goodheart)
benevolent
IATI Theater
64 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through September 5, $27.81 – $63.85
goodapplescollective.com
Sophie McIntosh’s benevolent is one of the most exhilarating, thoroughly satisfying productions I have ever seen. It’s not only one of the best shows of the year but of the decade.
Written by McIntosh and directed by Nina Goodheart, cofounders of Good Apples Collective, benevolent is the fourth collaboration between them, following the highly regarded Road Kills, cunnicularii, and cityscrape. Here’s hoping there are many more to come.
The show was inspired by the real-life Inwood Benevolent Home, which was incorporated as the New York Magdalen Benevolent Society in 1851. In March 1930, the Times called it “a modern refuge for girls from sixteen to twenty-one years of age, striving to remedy defects in character that would handicap them in their future adjustments to society.”
The play envelops you in its beguiling charm as you first enter the IATI Theater in the East Village. Charlotte Shi’s set is a small basement space surrounded by dirty white sheets; in the center-back is a laundry chute. The feeling of being trapped is palpable.
It’s September 1917, and four young women have been assigned to “soiled shift” at the Benevolent Home, a charitable institution in Upper Manhattan. Emma (Mia Fowler), twenty-six, is a fifty-cent prostitute who has been in and out of the home, keeping to herself, not seeking to make friends. Sarah (Rachel Ravel), nineteen and the most outgoing of the group, is there for singing for money on the boardwalk at Coney Island, which her father calls Sodom by the Sea. Margaret (Chani Reese), already cynical at twenty-four, works at a ten-dollar brothel. And Abby (Livvy Marcus), seventeen, was born into privilege and has been sent to the home by her father for having allowed her suitor, William of the Astor family, to come calling without a chaperone. Her mother was a former chairwoman of the Benevolent Society, and her godmother, Miss Antonia, is the matron currently in charge.
“What do you think? Blood or shit?” Sarah asks Abby at the beginning of the play, showing her a pair of dirty drawers. It’s a superb opening line, setting the tone, as there will be a lot more blood and shit to come.
Wearing white aprons over their pink uniforms, the women grab linen after linen, scrubbing hard at their washboards in tubs of water. The drudgery and monotony are evident; any time they make the slightest bit of progress, another pile of soiled sheets and clothes, always white with one notable exception, fall down the chute. The Sisyphean tasks extend both to their daily workload as well as their attempts to serve their six-month term and be released into a better life, though only Abby displays any kind of legitimate hope.
“My mother always said it was important to teach the poor fallen girls to work! And support themselves! So they don’t slip back into sin,” Abby tells Sarah, who replies, “I’m not sure your mother’s the best authority considering where her own girl ended up.” Abby answers, “One mistake is hardly a life of vice,” to which Sarah responds, “We’ve all got to start somewhere.”
When Margaret thinks she is pregnant following a dalliance with Stephen the carriage boy, the women are initially not sure what to do — Margaret does not want to have the baby — but they are soon bonding together, pooling their individual strengths to help her even if it breaks the rules. Their decision seems especially fraught after what happened to Ruthie, another pregnant woman whose terrifying, monstrous screams during childbirth rattle through the basement.
Amid betrayal, lies, various aspects of female friendship, and an aching camaraderie, the four women press on in this prisonlike atmosphere, each one trying to believe that there is something more waiting for them on the outside.
Four young women question their futures in Sophie McIntosh’s brilliant benevolent (photo by Nina Goodheart)
The play is beautifully written by McIntosh and intimately directed by Goodheart; there’s nary a word or movement out of place, resulting in an embracing, intoxicating poetry. It’s a tour de force of theatermaking; McIntosh’s script is exquisite, as scenes in the hands of other writers that might seem superfluous here always come back around to make subtle points and tie up loose ends brilliantly. Max Van’s sound design, from the screams to a pageant to the clunking of the laundry dropping down the chute, immerses the audience in the story, while Paige Seber’s lighting includes dangling bare bulbs that offer a sense of impending danger.
The cast is so exceptional that I was sorry the show was only ninety-five minutes; I wanted to spend more time with them. Fowler (cityscrape, Search Engine), Marcus (Suffs, Ride), Ravel (The Panic of ’29, Fiddler on the Roof), and Reese (Measure for Measure, The Cherry Orchard) bring depth and soul to their characters; they are not portraying stereotypes delivering messages but playing believable women faced with situations that are still relevant today as the government and the courts take away reproductive freedom, enforcing control over women’s bodies and manipulating voting rights. More than a century later, there are far too many women in the same circumstances as Abby, Sarah, Emma, and Margaret; they might not be in a benevolent home, but they are trapped nonetheless.
Despite all that seriousness, benevolent is also very funny, and a lot of fun; there is just the right amount of humor to make it feel fresh and alive and of the moment. I left the theater with a bounce in my step, filled with joy on many levels by what I’d just experienced.
benevolent is not just one of the best plays of the year; it’s one of my favorite shows of the decade. Stop what you’re doing and get tickets now. Please. Please. Please.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]