{"id":20928,"date":"2019-10-10T23:04:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T06:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=20928"},"modified":"2019-10-11T01:16:18","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T08:16:18","slug":"the-women-by-clare-boothe-luce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/the-women-by-clare-boothe-luce\/","title":{"rendered":"THE WOMEN by Clare Boothe Luce"},"content":{"rendered":"\nOLYMPIA, WA (10-9-19) — The Harlequin Theater (4th Ave, downtown) is a small venue (seating: 212) very professionally constructed and managed performing arts (primarily plays) center serving up original productions and local casts, a gemstone to Olympia’s downtown mix of businesses and spiraling gentrification. Yet they cater to the little people as well…even the least of these, by offering admission for whatever you can afford to pay on the first Wednesday of each production’s run. That’s the kind of deal only Dad’s usually make.\n\n\n\nThe Women’s period apparel (set in the 1930’s) was exquisitely rendered and in abundance. The cast was large and well rehearsed. The play itself was richer in character development and biting repartee than plot\/suspense as farce’s usually are. The language was frank–suitable for teenagers and adults capable of following it’s rapid rat-a-tat-tat pace. The cast were all quite animated and attractive in their bearing. It was an insider’s peek into the lives of the privileged and swells of the time engaged in their intrigue and petty gossip–all captured in ~2.5 hours on stage instead of the ~2.5 years of the storyline. Men are constantly referenced in the play but, never seen.\n\n\n\nLuce was born Ann Clare Boothe in New York City on 3-10-03. Her parents were not married and would separate in 1912. Her father, a sophisticated man and a brilliant violinist, instilled in his daughter az love of literature, if not music.\n\n\n\nShe attended school in Garden City and Tarrytown, New York, graduating first in her class in 1919 at 16. Her ambitious mother’s initial plan was to become an actress. Clare understudied Mary Pickford on Broadway at age 10, and had a small part in Thomas Edison’s 1915 movie, THE HEART OF A WAIF. After a tour of Europe with her mother and stepfather, Dr. Albert E. Austin, whom Ann Boothe married in 1919, she became interested in the women’s suffrage movement.\n\n\n\nHighly intelligent, ambitious, and blessed with a deceptively fragile blonde beauty, the young Clare soon abandoned ideological feminism to pursue other interests. She wed George Tuttle Brokaw, millionaire heir to a New York clothing fortune on 8-10-23 at the age of 20. They had one daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw (1924 – 1944). According to Boothe, Brokaw was a hopeless alcoholic, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1929.\n\n\n\nOne can’t help but notice how the play reflect’s the arc of Luce’s own life, the characters plucked from her acquaintances and familiars, farce being the main cloak lending anonymity to the bereaved.\n\n\n\nOwn 11-23-35, she married Henry Luce, the publisher of TIME, LIFE, and FORTUNE. She thereafter called herself Clare Boothe Luce.\n\n\n\nOn 1-11-44, her only child, Anne Clare Brokaw, a 19-year-old senior at Stanford University, was killed in an automobile accident. As a result of the tragedy, Luce explored psychotherapy and Catholicism. She became an ardent essayist and lecturer in celebration of her faith and became known as a charismatic and forceful public speaker.\n\n\n\nPolitically, Luce was a leading conservative in later life and was well known for her anti-communism. In her youth, she briefly aligned herself with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt, but later became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. She later became the first American woman appointed to a major ambassadorship post abroad.\n\n\n\nA writer with considerable powers of invention and wit, Luce published STUFFED SHIRTS, a promising volume of short stories in 1931. Much of Luce’s famously acid wit (“No good deed goes unpunished”, “Widowhood is a fringe benefit of marriage”, “A hospital is no place to be sick”) can be traced back to the days when, as a wealthy young divorcee in the early 1930’s, she became a caption writer at Vogue and then, associate editor of Vanity Fair. She not only edited the works of such great humorists as P. G. Wodenhouse and Corey Ford but contributed to many comic pieces of her own.\n\n\n\nShe published numerous articles during World War II as a journalist with LIFE magazine. Her real talent, however, was as a playwright. After the failure of her initial stage effort, the marital melodrama ABIDE WITH ME (1935), she rapidly followed up with a satirical comedy, THE WOMEN. Deploying a cast of no fewer than 40 actresses who discussed men in often scorching language, it became a Broadway smash in 1936 and, three years later, a successful Hollywood movie. Toward the end of her life, Luce claimed that for half a century, she had steadily received royalties from productions of THE WOMEN all around the world. Later in the 1930’s, she wrote two more successful, but less durable plays, also both made into movies: KISS THE BOYS GOODBYE and MARGIN FOR ERROR. The latter work “presented an all-out attack on the Nazi’s racist philosophy”. Its opening night in Princeton on 10-14-39, was attended by Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. Otto Preminger directed and starred in both the Broadway production and screen adaptation.\n\n\n\n
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Jessica Weaver: IN 3 SEASONS AND 4 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/a> \u2014  Silvia
The Understudy<\/a> \u2014  Roxanne
Cymbeline<\/a> \u2014  Queen\/Jailor
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. Stephen Haines (Mary)
Jess has her BA in theatre from Washington State, and her MFA in performance from Arizona State. Shortly after school, Jess married her husband who serves in the army and through that, has been able to perform, direct, and write for theatres all over the country. www.jessicaweaver.net

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Shannon Lee Clair: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. Howard Fowler (Sylvia)
MEMBER, AEA

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Amanda Kemp: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. John Day (Peggy)

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Jessica Robins: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. Phelps Potter (Edith)

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Heather Matthews: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Nancy Blake \/ Princess Tamara

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Kate Anders: N 2 SEASONS AND 2 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Jane
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol<\/a> \u2014  Becky\/Ensemble

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Teri Lee Thomas: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Countess de Lage \/ Miss Fordyce

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Jana Tyrrell: IN 11 SEASONS AND 18 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
Forever Stardust<\/a> \u2014  Choreographer
The 1940s Radio Hour<\/a> \u2014  Ann
Billy<\/a> \u2014  Billy Tipton
The Stardust Club Christmas 1944<\/a> \u2014  Frankie Malone
Baltimore Waltz<\/a> \u2014  Anna
Stardust for Christmas<\/a> \u2014  Frankie Malone
A Streetcar Named Desire<\/a> \u2014  Blanche
The Real Thing<\/a> \u2014  Charlotte
Forever Stardust<\/a> \u2014  Frankie Malone
A Long Day’s Journey into Night<\/a> \u2014  Mary Tyrone
Assassins<\/a> \u2014  Sara Jane Moore
Sylvia<\/a> \u2014  Kate
The Tempest<\/a> \u2014  Voice of Juno
The Mystery of Edwin Drood<\/a> \u2014  Miss Angela Prysock\/Princess Puffer
The Winter’s Tale<\/a> \u2014  Hermione
The Glass Menagerie<\/a> \u2014  Amanda
The Importance of Being Earnest<\/a> \u2014  Lady Bracknell
The Constant Wife<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. Culver
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Mrs. Morehead \/ Sadie

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Hannah Seymore: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Little Mary

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Katie Medford: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Olga \/ Miss Watts \/ Helene

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Charlotte Darling: IN 2 SEASONS AND 2 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
Ruthless<\/a> \u2014  Judy Denmark
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Crystal Allen

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Shauntal Pyper: IN 1 SEASON AND 2 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
Love and Information<\/a> \u2014  Ensemble
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Exercise Instructress \/ Miss Trimmerback

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Paige Doyle: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Maggie \/ Nurse

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Eleise Moore: IN 5 SEASONS AND 6 SHOWS AT HARLEQUIN:
Man of La Mancha<\/a> \u2014  Assistant Director
Recent Tragic Events<\/a> \u2014  Stage Manager
First Date<\/a> \u2014  Lauren \/ Woman #1
Ruthless<\/a> \u2014  Miss Thorne \/ Miss Block
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Miriam Aarons
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol<\/a> \u2014  Inspector Lestrade\/Ensemble
An Olympia native, Eleise attended the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, California, and has continued to perform on and off on the central coast of California ever since. In Chicago, she studied at The Second City and iO (Improv Olympic) before deciding that snow up to your waist for six years wasn\u2019t her cup of tea. She made her Harlequin debut as the Stage Manager in Recent Tragic Events<\/em> in 2015. Favorite roles include Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors<\/em> (Centralia), Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>, and Little Sally in Urinetown<\/em> (PCPA.) She would like to thank her family for supporting her return to acting full time, because sometimes those cheesy Instagram posts are right, you aren\u2019t made to just pay bills and die.

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Kimberlee Ann Wolfson: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Lucy

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Shea Bolton: IN 1 SEASON AND 1 SHOW AT HARLEQUIN:
The Women<\/a> \u2014  Cigarettes Girl<\/figcaption>\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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OLYMPIA, WA (10-9-19) — The Harlequin Theater (4th Ave, downtown) is a small venue (seating: 212) very professionally constructed and managed performing arts (primarily plays) center serving up original productions and local casts, a gemstone to Olympia’s downtown mix of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20928"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21008,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20928\/revisions\/21008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}