A FEMININE ENDING, a play by Sarah Treem
Sarah Treem, author of A Feminine Ending now playing at Playwrights Horizons in New York, has launched a theme dear to the hearts of many women but has constructed her play in such a surface and stereotypical manner that we merely watch it rather than empathize with deeply felt compassion.
The theme centers on conflicts of a modern young woman attempting to begin a career, in this case as a composer. Life interferes with pressures from earning a living, sexual desires, encountering marriage choices, the prospects of babies, and shouldering unresolved problems of parents.
She readily agrees to support boyfriend who is trying to make the grade as rock star by writing jingles for an advertising firm. He finally tells her each person must go it alone. Mother, absorbed in her own frustration (never fully delineated), lays her own problems on daughter. When father tells daughter to go ahead and write music, daughter cries out, "I haven’t got time!" Finally, daughter comes to the realization that women, in language and in actuality, have always been second and that it is her own fear of moving ahead that has encumbered her.
The confessional monologue method of characters speaking directly to the audience inspires unneeded words that do not really penetrate, and there is no real heightened dramatics in the dramatic scenes that makes us care. The characters are drawn so that we anticipate what they are to say. The subplot incident of the parent’s temporary broken marriage is not convincing, only confusingly unexplained. The ending, without a catharsis, again in monologue form, tells rather than moves us, and leaves us thinking "So what, who cares." It is unfortunate because this is an important theme that should be treated with depth of understanding.
The acting is overall adequate, though characters are never truly realized, except in one scene between mother and daughter. The direction includes smoothly wrought transitions for the most part, and the set is a bewildering mix of realism and stylized modern.
Sarah Treem, author of A Feminine Ending now playing at Playwrights Horizons in New York, has launched a theme dear to the hearts of many women but has constructed her play in such a surface and stereotypical manner that we merely watch it rather than empathize with deeply felt compassion.
The theme centers on conflicts of a modern young woman attempting to begin a career, in this case as a composer. Life interferes with pressures from earning a living, sexual desires, encountering marriage choices, the prospects of babies, and shouldering unresolved problems of parents.
She readily agrees to support boyfriend who is trying to make the grade as rock star by writing jingles for an advertising firm. He finally tells her each person must go it alone. Mother, absorbed in her own frustration (never fully delineated), lays her own problems on daughter. When father tells daughter to go ahead and write music, daughter cries out, "I haven’t got time!" Finally, daughter comes to the realization that women, in language and in actuality, have always been second and that it is her own fear of moving ahead that has encumbered her.
The confessional monologue method of characters speaking directly to the audience inspires unneeded words that do not really penetrate, and there is no real heightened dramatics in the dramatic scenes that makes us care. The characters are drawn so that we anticipate what they are to say. The subplot incident of the parent’s temporary broken marriage is not convincing, only confusingly unexplained. The ending, without a catharsis, again in monologue form, tells rather than moves us, and leaves us thinking "So what, who cares." It is unfortunate because this is an important theme that should be treated with depth of understanding.
The acting is overall adequate, though characters are never truly realized, except in one scene between mother and daughter. The direction includes smoothly wrought transitions for the most part, and the set is a bewildering mix of realism and stylized modern.
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