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| Kate Witt and Marti Mukhalian in Third (photo Michael Brunk) |
Third
ArtsWest
Through March 22
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy
Wasserstein died far too early (of cancer when she was 55 years old). Third was her last play, which played
Off-Broadway in 2005, just before her death. It is now performing at ArtsWest
with a tight cast of five, directed by actor/director Peggy Gannon.
Wasserstein focused resolutely, sometimes, on women’s issues
and women’s voices, as she dissected and illuminated specific time periods and
encompassed women’s rise to bang against the glass ceilings and find their
voices. However, she did not neglect the classics, and in Third, her theme is King Lear.
Laurie Jameson (a vigorous, take-charge, and accomplished Marty
Mukhalian) is at the peak of her career, having helped generate change and
awareness of women’s issues and political power at a select, small Eastern
university. She lectures on literature from a feminist perspective. As the play
opens, Professor Jameson lectures the audience on King Lear.
A young man, Woodson Bull III (a convincing, earnest Mark
Tyler Miller), presents a paper with his analysis of Lear. However, he is at the school as a wrestler, with dreams of
becoming a sports agent. Given his name, legacy number (“the Third”), “jock”
status, and white male privilege, Jameson profiles him and decides he doesn’t
have the intellect or capacity to have written the analysis himself and accuses
him of plagiarism.
The play can be looked at as a metaphor for Shakespeare’s King Lear, itself. Professor Jameson loses
everything she worked for after mistaking Third’s honest opinion as stolen
analysis, just as King Lear loses everything after rejecting his honest
daughter’s expression of love.
It can also be viewed
as what happens when an outsider struggles so long and hard to become an
insider that she forgets to be open to another’s viewpoint. So she becomes just
exactly like those she supplanted in the first place, who judged her, as a
woman, insufficiently intelligent or accomplished to be the professor she
aspired to be at the beginning of her career.
Jameson’s portrayal is softened, enhanced, and explained by
interactions with three key people: her daughter Emily (Kacey Shiflet), her
dementia-increasing father Jack (Bill Higham), and her colleague Nancy (Kate
Witt), who is battling cancer. Each of these strong performances and wonderful
scene dialogues enlarge who Jameson can be, if she’d let herself, with Third.
As we witness her compassion, her trials as a daughter, her difficulties as a
mother of a grown child and a friend to a suffering colleague, we can see what
she could offer Third as a mentor and teacher, and the tragic blinds she
willfully keeps on her eyes.
This may sound like a tragedy, ala King Lear, but it’s far from that! It’s an absorbing, thoughtful
play with loads of ideas and ways of examining what Wasserstein is saying.
There are funny moments, wry moments, and especially heart-breaking moments
where Mukhalian and Higham can move you to tears.
Gannon’s vision of Third
is spare. Burton Yuen’s set design has a cloud-strewn backdrop and stately
windows hung from the ceiling, implying the grandeur of the college. Costuming
by Anastasia Armes is simple, yet effective. Lighting by Tristan Roberson is
muted and subtle. Sound design and song choices root the play in 2003 (by
Johanna Melamed). The simplicity sets of the complex clash of ideas nicely.
It’s a terrific opportunity to have a Wasserstein play on
Seattle stage again. Third proves her
power to ignite controversy, discussion, changing perspectives, and even an
opportunity to see where feminism might have gone off the rails for some
people.