The Housewives of Mannheim

As long as Alan Brody's play "The Housewives of Mannheim," a New Jersey Repertory Company production currently running at 59E59 Theaters as part of the Americas Off Broadway festival, remains a slice-of-life portrayal of four Jewish women living in a Brooklyn apartment building in 1944, it is luminous and affecting. Unfortunately, when it turns into a sermonizing denunciation of prejudice, it becomes stiff and obvious.

The play focuses on May Black, a beautiful wife and mother whose husband is fighting overseas. After seeing a (fictional) Vermeer painting called "The Housewives of Mannheim," May begins to look at the world through new eyes, and the consequences are unpredictable and far-reaching. May's best friend, Billie, encouraged by May's awakening, attempts to seduce her one night, with catastrophic results. A terrified May rejects Billie and turns her back on Sophie, a worldly concert pianist who has fled persecution in Austria. May even goes so far as to "out" Billie to her traditionalist friend Alice, whose whispering campaign kills Billie's cloth-selling business. These conflicts come to a head in May's kitchen, where she is forced to choose between the fear that accompanies growth and the stifling safety of close-mindedness.

Brody and director SuzAnne Barabas paint a lovely portrait of a repressed but intelligent woman coming hesitantly to life in Act 1, but in Act 2 their subtlety deserts them. May becomes a one-note caricature of her former self, Alice a spouter of conservative clichés, Billie an anachronistic gay crusader, and Sophie a sort of deus ex machina. It is ridiculous that Billie would spend five minutes with Alice after Alice destroyed her business, but truth is sacrificed for cleverness, so that all four women can be together in May's kitchen for a play-ending tableau reminiscent of the faux Vermeer, which is projected onto a scrim beside them.

Reprising their roles from the New Jersey Repertory Company production in Long Branch last year, Pheonix Vaughn as May, Corey Tazmania as Billie, Natalie Mosco as Sophie, and Wendy Peace as Alice constitute a splendid acting ensemble, especially in the first half of the play. That they fail to maintain the same level of excellence in the second is more the script's fault than theirs.

Jessica L. Parks' Brooklyn kitchen is a perfect counterpart to Vermeer's. Patricia E. Doherty's costumes are period-appropriate, sexy, and refreshingly un-costume-like. Merek Royce Press' sound design makes the music of the 1940s sound as vibrant and immediate to us as it does to the characters on stage.

One fine scene does not a good play make, but Billie's seduction of May is so wonderfully dramatized that it temporarily elevates this uneven work to sweet theatrical art. That rare achievement is worth celebrating.


Presented by New Jersey Repertory Company, by special arrangement with Pat Aldiss and Vasi Laurence, as part of Americas Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., NYC. May 14–June 6. Tue. and Wed., 7:15 p.m.; Thu.–Sat., 8:15 p.m.; Sat., 2:15 p.m.; Sun., 3:15 pm. (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com