TheaterWorks, Hartford, CT
through November 8, 2015
by Jarice Hanson
 |
| Wendy Wasserstein |
TheaterWorks is celebrating their thirtieth anniversary
season and the tenth anniversary of Wendy Wasserstein’s final play, “Third.”
Director Rob Ruggiero impeccably blends the talents of his lighting, set
design, sound design, and costuming team in this thoughtful, evenly paced
production. He honors the timelessness of Wasserstein’s play by focusing on the
personal story she wanted to tell shortly before she died of cancer in 2006.
Actress Kate Levy keenly projects the multiple dimensions of
Laurie Jameson, a professor who questions hegemonic masculinity and political
power while struggling with her father’s dementia, her two daughters’ life
choices, a friend with cancer, and her own entry into the third stage of life
opens the show with a monolog in which she lectures her students to “challenge
the norms.” While the character hopes to open the others’ eyes to what she sees
as “truth” in literature, she is really speaking about Wasserstein’s own
challenge to the norms of theatre, patriarchy, and politics. Levy, who portrays
enigmatic characters beautifully, is flawless.
Laurie accuses a student of plagiarizing his paper on “King
Lear” at an elite New England school (a thinly disguised Amherst College),
reasoning that young Woodson Bull III is a white male who is used to a life of
privilege. Preferring to be called “Third,” the young man challenges his
accuser in an academic honest hearing, and Laurie is forced to reevaluate her
search for what might be her ultimate truth. In a debut performance, Conor M. Hamill is believable as
Third. Olivia Hoffman as Laurie’s daughter and Andrea Gallo as a professor
friend with cancer who embraces life are original characters who defy
convention. Laurie’s father, heartbreakingly played by Edmond Genest, reminds the
audience of the tenuousness of the mind and the many roles we play in our
worldly lives.
“Third” is the type of play that gives the audience member
much to ponder and much to appreciate. The play requires some serious thinking,
reminding its patrons that theatre often tells the universal story of life, the
quest for meaning, and coming to terms with what is learned along the way.
