The Under- ground Railway Theater, in Central Square, Cambridge, is providing audiences with an engaging, hilarious production of VANITY FAIR, AN (IM-)MORALITY PLAY by the award-winning playwright Kate Hamill, running through February 23, 2020. Based on the ginormous 1847 serial novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, this adaptation manages to extract the essential jewels from the original 700+ page cacophony of characters and train wrecks which kept 19th century readers gasping for the next installment of the novel.
Using four men and three women to play scads of roles in a clever set that brings the backstage onto stage center, Hamill has given actors the opportunity to show off their versatility, their physical wit, and their English accents.
So what’s it all about? With the 1815 Battle of Waterloo as social background, we follow the intertwined fates of two girls leaving their boarding school together. Sweet Amelia Sedley (tenderly played by Malikah McHerrin-Cobb), from a respected wealthy family, is beloved by everyone. Her innocence and naiveté combine to make her generosity blind to the faults of others. Becky Sharp (played brilliantly by Josephine Moshiri Elwood) is the orphan of a French mother and an artist father who had been a teacher at Miss Pinkerton’s academy. Becky has both taught French and been used as a servant to cover her board, so she is as happy to leave the establishment as the owner is to see her gone. Amelia has invited Becky to go home with her for a week before Becky has to go on to take up the unfortunate position of governess (groans from all the characters every time this word is mentioned) in a rich man’s home.
The rest of the story is about the ups and downs of the two women’s fates, as they fight to survive in a society that gives women few options, although only one of them is initially forced by poverty and lack of connections to worry about that. Early on, Becky’s dilemma is clear. Thackeray writes in the novel that we cannot blame this orphaned girl for attempting to catch any well-connected gentleman she meets, as unlike other girls she “had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her…”
So Becky develops a tool kit of self-defense and seductive moves that yield her a husband and, later, even more lucrative attachments, while Amelia, whose fortunes collapse, is left helpless and alone, a false sense of goodness and loyalty preventing her from recognizing who might be her true friend.
While this quick outline may not seem to promise to deliver the witty romp that this Underground Railway Theater production proves to be, you’ve got to see it to believe it. The kazoo/fart theme, the riotous cornucopia of crazed props, the seven onstage rooms in which the actors change costume and gender and age, the simultaneous double narratives at different ends of the stage, and the brilliance of the writing keep the audience transfixed and giggling. Sarcasm, slap-stick, wink-wink sauciness, and a surprising score (“We Are the Champions”) only add to our enjoyment.
The playwright Kate Hamill (left) has a background of greatly admired adaptations of 19th century classics – from several Jane Austen novels to Little Women to this brilliant condensation of Vanity Fair. Not one to shirk a challenge, she has now been commissioned by A.R.T. to adapt The Odyssey.
Props to Stage Manager Elizabeth Yvette Ramirez and all those managing the innumerable props from mops to toys to masks to instruments to Monopoly money to the rest of the crazy pile. Likewise, Leslie Held’s costuming is wild and wacky and wonderful. Kudos to Director David R. Gammons for pulling it all together. Congratulations to the actors in their multiple roles and their enduring energy over 2.5 hours. Besides the two women, Elwood and McHerrin-Cobb, mentioned above, they include David Keohane, Paul Melendy, Stewart Evan Smith, Evan Turissini, and especially Central Square Theater’s Debra Wise who, as the Manager or M.C., has the last word: “We want what we want. Welcome to Vanity Fair.”
Here's a one-minute clip that gives the flavor...
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