Miss Witherspoon
(Photo © Joan Marcus)
If Christopher Durang is remembered 50 years from now, it will be for his remarkable facility for creating some of the stage’s most memorable women, from the title character of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You to the Brennan sisters in The Marriage of Bette and Boo. It hasn’t hurt that these ladies have been played by some of this country’s most remarkable actresses, including Joan Allen, Elizabeth Franz, Dana Ivey, Debra Monk, Mercedes Ruehl, and Sigourney Weaver.
In 1999, Durang pulled off another coup when Kristine Nielsen portrayed the appropriately named Mrs. Siezmagraff in Betty’s Summer Vacation. Now, these singular talents have re-teamed with equally felicitous results in Miss Witherspoon, the amiable trifle that has wandered into Playwrights Horizons after a month-long run at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. And it doesn’t take long to realize that this clever-enough but overlong (at just 90 minutes) sketch about a dead woman who tries to defy reincarnation might itself be D.O.A. if not for Nielsen’s consummate comic timing.
She plays Veronica, a decidedly depressed middle-aged woman who kills herself in part because she couldn’t live with the fallout from Skylab, the ill-conceived 1970s space station. Having done herself in, she wants nothing more than a good, long sleep. Instead, Veronica finds herself in the bardo — a sort of Buddhist waiting station — where her spirit guide, Maryamma (the lovely Mahira Kakkar), tries to lead her through the reincarnations she needs to cleanse her “brown tweed aura.” But Veronica is a stubborn bird with no desire to live life over and over again, and this has earned her the nickname Miss Witherspoon. “You’re like some negative Englishwoman in an Agatha Christie book who everybody finds bothersome,” Maryamma tells her in explaining the moniker.
As that sentence proves, Durang’s way with a well-timed digression is still his strongest suit. Such quippy asides provide Miss Witherspoon with its many laughs — particularly if references to Mary Rodgers, Thornton Wilder, and Albert Camus tickle your funny bone. If you’re expecting lots of guffaws from the actual plot, however, you’re bound to be disappointed. For one thing, Durang spends far too much having Veronica repeat her complaints about reincarnation to no discernible effect. And when she does return to Earth, a total of four times, only one of her journeys is remotely funny. Then again, Durang isn’t just going for laughs. He actually has something serious on his mind: a message about wasting life’s opportunities and a call to examine man’s general inhumanity to man. But whether because he hasn’t thought things through completely enough to compose a fully formed play or he simply doesn’t have that much to say on the subject, Miss Witherspoon seems rather like a work in progress.
The same cannot be said about the production, which is extremely well polished under Emily Mann’s smooth direction. David Korins’ set, consisting mostly of a Magritte-like sky on the walls, is quite evocative; so are Jess Goldstein’s simple but spot-on costumes. Best of all, Darron L. West has provided a very impressive soundscape for the proceedings. (So that’s what it sounds like when the sky is falling!)
In addition to the delightful Kakkar, the cast consists of Jeremy Shamos, Colleen Werthmann, and the always wonderful Lynda Gravatt, all of whom offer sharp characterizations in a variety of roles. But Miss Witherspoon is Nielsen’s showcase, and no one can accuse her of not making the most of the opportunity. Her outrage every time she mentions Rex Harrison (who may or may not have been Veronica’s ex-husband) is nothing short of hysterical, and her exchanges with a certain religious figure who shows up toward the play’s end are priceless. But Nielsen’s true gift is that she makes us care about the ultimate fate of Veronica, who finally learns that going forward is the only direction available. Durang may not always hit his targets, but Nielsen scores bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye.
