NewsRelease

UNCG Theatre to Perform “The Women”

(l-r) Eloise Hassell, Marcela Schlueter and Vanessa Davis perform a scene from "The Women,"

GREENSBORO - UNCG Theatre will perform “The Women,” a classic American play about a catty clique of high society wives, Oct. 1-5.

The play by Clare Boothe Luce unfolds when Mary discovers that her husband of 12 years is cheating on her with Crystal, a sales clerk. Crystal would like to make Mary’s husband her own, but Mary won’t give him up without a fight.

 “The play has become a classic in the American canon,” said Director Roger Smart. “Producing it some 70 years after its original staging affords us the opportunity to pose the question, ‘To what degree has the situation of those that the play represents changed?’”

Luce gained fame as a playwright, socialite, congresswoman and ambassador to Italy. Her second husband was magazine magnate Henry R. Luce, the president of Time, Inc. “The Women,” with characters loosely based on women Luce knew in New York, had an initial Broadway run of 657 performances in the 1930s.

 “The women who inspired this play deserved to be smacked across the head with a meat ax and that, I flatter myself, is exactly what I smacked them with,” Luce said.

The UNCG production will address the subject matter in a more contemporary context.

Vanessa Davis has the role of Mary, with Caitlin Van Hecke as Crystal, the object of her husband’s infidelity. The peculiar Countess de Lage will be played by Heidi Koling. Chelsea DeSantis designed the sets, Lisa Tireman designed the costumes, and Todd Wiggins designed the lighting.

The play will be performed in the Taylor Theatre at 7 p.m. Oct. 1 and 2, 8 p.m. Oct. 3 and 4, and 2 p.m. Oct. 5. Free parking is available behind the Weatherspoon Art Museum for all evening and weekend performances.

To order tickets by phone, call (336) 334-4849 on weekdays between noon and 5 p.m.  Tickets also are available at the University Box Office and one hour before curtain time at the Brown Building Theatre.

For more information, visit the Department of Theatre’s web site at www.uncg.edu/the.

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