Somewhere between feminism and farce, there's Theresa Rebeck's world of women, most of them basket cases from societal pressure, endless striving, and the eternal dichotomy of professional hierarchy or domestic matriarchy. There's a rich symbolism at work here as five thirtysomething women meet weekly in a knitting circle that harks back to an earlier era when the quilting bee was a place for airing one's wishes, worries, and woes. Casting on, dropping stitches, learning new ones, increasing and decreasing, ending up with something wondrous or unrecognizable—these are descriptive of the addled lives to which 20th and 21st century women have fallen heir. The fiction of having it all takes a blasting from reality as each of the knitters reaches for what seems always to be beyond her grasp.
Daddy always liked Lily best because she was such a good girl, which forced sister Liz to become a really bad one. Liz is having an affair with Lily's underemployed husband, Bob, while Lily is madly drawn to her filthy-rich, obnoxious neighbor, Miles, an honorable sociopath who, with Lily's help, is taking demeaning inventory of spousal possibilities: Paula, a psychiatrist who can't heal herself; Margie, who's desperately in need; and big bad Liz. Miles doesn't get to Gina before she has her meltdown when she's downsized from her law firm and takes up knitting as a compulsion.
Rebeck's dialogue is wild, witty, wonderful, and breathlessly funny. She consistently hits these women's rites, and pleas for rights, on the ridiculous bone. Johanna Steinberg's Margie deliciously says it all for the lovably needy among us. Victoria Platt is coolly courageous and suitably detached as Paula, the professional, African-American woman who has only most of the answers. Jill Sayre's Liz is a sexy bundle of roaring woman when she's not hiding from herself in the bush, but she can't knit worth a damn. Shelley Delayne clings to type as the uptight Lily, but her affect is often more grating than humorous. Merrill Davis plays Gina, the damaged child, as the simpleton least likely to have been called to practice at the bar. Bru Muller is delightfully horrible as the patronizing bombast Miles. Emil Lawrence is nicely wimpy as Bob, the sole male in the knitting class.
Although director Nicolette Vajtay gets the piece's essence, she does the play a disservice by inserting huge, full scene changes between each scene, which halt what should have been powerful forward motion. The actors move couches, armchairs, and coffee tables; set and clear tables; hang pictures; change costumes; and all but vacuum the rug in the seven blackouts between scenes. During intermission, the last scene incomprehensibly remains set and is changed only after second act curtain up, in yet another blackout. Each scene then begins with the characters posed in statuesque silhouette in a retro, commedia style. A modicum of creativity could easily eliminate these full stops.
"Loose Knit," presented by and at the Laurelgrove Theatre, 12265 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m. Mar. 26-May 8. $15. (310) 415-4275.