DCPA NEWS CENTER
Enjoy the best stories and perspectives from the theatre world today.
Enjoy the best stories and perspectives from the theatre world today.
The DCPA Theatre Company’s 40th anniversary season includes at least two stories of women who overcome great societal barriers in ways that should strike audiences as remarkably contemporary, starting this September with W. Somerset Maugham’s cheeky satire The Constant Wife, followed in January by Leo Tolstoy’s opus Anna Karenina.
Consider Constance Middleton, a privileged 1920s British woman who would appear to have everything as she cheerfully plays her traditional domestic role. But in time she manages to elude the strict societal confines of relationships, fidelity and social roles to forge her own economic future and discover true happiness. Which may make The Constant Wife a century old but, hardly a period piece.
“This play is a hilariously witty, totally fresh, look at marriage,” Artistic Director Chris Coleman said. “It’s almost 100 years old, and it feels like it was written yesterday.”
Women, of course, have faced suffocating gender constricts since the beginning of time. Which means Constance comes from a long line of female stage characters who have fought that “constant” fight throughout the centuries. Here is a tiny, perhaps surprising, surely inadequate but hopefully fun snapshot of just a few other iconic, pioneering feminist stage characters:
John Moore was named one of the 12 most influential theater critics in the U.S by American Theatre Magazine in 2011. He has since taken a groundbreaking position as the Denver Center’s Senior Arts Journalist.
The Constant Wife: Ticket information
Constance Middleton cheerfully plays her traditional role as the intelligent, charming housewife of a successful doctor. But as her friends and family keep secrets close to their chest, she has nothing to hide — and everything to gain. Featuring an infectiously plucky heroine at the helm who Variety calls a predecessor “to the women of Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City,” this cheeky satire overturns the expectations of relationships, fidelity and social roles that were just as relevant in the 1920s as they are today.
More Colorado theatre coverage on the DCPA NewsCenter