Of An Age

Review of The Age of Innocence, Hartford Stage

Edith Wharton understood well the humor and the pathos of those conditioned by the rigors of the Gilded Age in “Old New York.” Her eye and, particularly, her ear for how the upper-crust navigated delicate social situations permitted her to paint their portraits with considerable vivacity and knowledge. And The Age of Innocence is her greatest novel. Dramatized on the stage in her own day, it was made into a very faithful film by Martin Scorsese in the early 1990s, and has been adapted to the stage in our day by Douglas McGrath (the filmmaker of Emma), and, directed by Doug Hughes, is in its world premiere at Hartford Stage.

May Welland (Helen Cespedes), foreground, with Sara Norton (photographs by T. Charles Erickson)

The story concerns Newland Archer (Andrew Veenstra), a young lawyer ostensibly in love with lovely May Welland (Helen Cespedes), both the products of families that pride themselves on their social standing. They seem particularly well-matched, and yet their elders—especially Mrs. Welland (Deirdre Madigan)—prefer to delay the marriage. The couple are almost ready to announce their engagement when May’s cousin, Ellen (Sierra Boggess), returns to New York, fleeing an unhappy marriage to Count Olenski, a Polish nobleman. For reasons of family solidarity, Archer finds himself compelled—due to the air of scandal that hangs about his fiancée’s cousin—to speed up the announcement of the engagement and, eventually, the settling of a wedding date, all the while dallying in an increasingly passionate flirtation with Madame Olenska.

The Old Gentleman (Boyd Gaines), Countess Ellen Olenska (Sierra Boggess), Newland Archer (Andrew Veenstra)

In McGrath’s adaptation, the action is framed for us by a more elderly Archer (Boyd Gaines), who looks back with a knowing indulgence on his youthful infatuation with Ellen. The tone of his narration isn’t nearly as arch as Wharton’s narrator can be, but it goes a long way to make the play feel more contemporary than the novel. The novel’s narration is focused almost entirely through Archer, so having him reflect on his past in this way corresponds to the novel’s manner of being both in the story and above it. It’s a device that lets us enjoy our distance from the action, and to counter the naïve Archer with Gaines’ wonderfully dry view.

The Old Gentleman (Boyd Gaines)

Though the focus on Archer is key to what Wharton wrote, it’s also the element that might make the play feel a little too male-dominated for our times. The women are as Archer knows them, not as they know themselves. A constraint, yes, but it lets us see how much he misses, gets wrong, and mismanages. His is a story of an effort to be original in a world that only values tradition, but it’s also the story of how a man in love wants to cling to his illusions about the object—or, here, objects—of his desire. We—and, in age, Archer—learn how the women in the case control so very much without him quite seeing how they do. The “innocence” is entirely Archer’s, much as he might consider himself a worldly man.

The cast and staging of the play are fully engaging, and the adaptation plays a bit like the kind of plays that Archer and his crowd flocked to see: it’s a story of a certain love—the approved one—triumphant, and of another love—the “wrong” one—become a romantic possibility never fulfilled. The whirl of Archer’s pre- and post-nuptial affair holds our attention because it is so very much like a play within a play. The manners of the time are all about maintaining a show and speaking according to a script that rarely reveals real feelings or thoughts.

Newland Archer (Andrew Veentra), May Welland (Helen Cespedes), Mrs. Manson Mingott (Darrie Lawrence), Mrs. Welland (Deidre Madigan)

Fans of the novel (or of the film) will find certain characters rather flattened here, such as the priggish Larry Lefferts (Tony Ward), and the elusive yet ubiquitous Julius Beaufort (Nick Wyman), though certain elements—like the austere views of Mr. and Mrs. Van der Luyden (Tony Ward and Deirdre Madigan)—come through entertainingly. Darrie Lawrence’s every scene as Mrs. Manson Mingott, the dowager empress of this society, is a delight and all too brief.

Newland Archer (Andrew Veenstra)

Andrew Veenstra is a young heartthrob of an Archer, fully living up to the obtuseness the role entails but rather a harder sell as the self-examining aesthete of Wharton’s conception. Sierra Boggess is a Countess Olenska who seems thoroughly American and, unlike Wharton’s vision, untainted by the wicked old Europe she has lived in since shortly after her coming out. Boggess and Veenstra sing a lovely duet of “Beautiful Dreamer,” however unlikely such an act would be for the Countess. May, we find, is unable to sing the part with the same lyricism, a strike against her. Helen Cespedes comes off as closest to Wharton’s sense of her character, as her May is both girlish and fully able to wield the upper hand through a successful stratagem.

The cast and set of The Age of Innocence at Hartford Stage

John Lee Beatty’s set, with its array of transparent doors, makes the most of Hartford Stage's wide open spaces, and Linda Cho’s costumes regale us with the fashions of the times. The world of The Age of Innocence is one in which all is show and that makes for an entertaining spectacle. What’s not so clear is what we gain by contemplating such romantic misalignment in our age. A live pianist onstage adds color to the vestiges of romance that still move Archer as “the old gentleman,” offering a chastened remembrance of things past.

Countess Ellen Olenska (Sierra Boggess), foreground, with Sara Norton, left, and Deirdre Madigan

The Age of Innocence
By Edith Wharton
Adapted for the stage by Douglas McGrath
Directed by Doug Hughes

Scenic Design: John Lee Beatty; Costume Design: Linda Cho; Lighting Design: Ben Stanton; Original Music and Sound Design: Mark Bennett; Wig and Hair Design: Charles LaPointe; Choreographer: Peter Pucci; Production Stage Manager: Lori Lundquist

Cast: Sierra Boggess, Helen Cespedes, Boyd Gaines, Darrie Lawrence, Deirdre Madigan, Haviland Morris, Sara Norton, Dan Owens, Josh Salt, Sara Schwab, Andrew Veenstra, Alessandro Gian Viviano, Tony Ward, Nick Wyman

Hartford Stage
April 5-May 6, 2o18

Story Playlist 10: Roman Fever

Edith Wharton: “Roman Fever” (1934) Among the best tricks employed by masterful short story authors is a last line that completely changes our view of everything that came before it. When the last line is a reversal that turns the tables on the dominant character, there can be a special tang, a final kick.

“Roman Fever” introduces us to a pair of matronly Society women, Mrs. Delphin Slade and Mrs. Horace Ansley. Both are widows who have known one another since they were girls; in time, it becomes clear that Mrs. Slade—Alida—made the better match than did Grace Ansley, as Delphin Slade was a very prominent figure in his time. Each woman has a marriageable daughter they have traveled with to Rome. We meet them as the girls—Babs Ansley and Jenny Slade—go off on an outing with eligible bachelors, leaving the mothers to share the late afternoon sun at a restaurant overlooking the Colosseum. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley have lived in much the same orbit, but were friendly when they were about their daughters’ ages, decades ago, on a holiday in Rome.

Surprised to encounter each other after so much time, and in such similar circumstances, they seem to share companionable silence, thinking fondly of the same old times. The story is told mainly from the point of view of Mrs. Slade and the reader is lulled into thinking that this is a character study about the slightly condescending matron, who seems to have a chip on her shoulder regarding the sweeter, quieter Mrs. Ansley, who sits calmly knitting. The resentment seems to stem from the dynamic between the older women and their respective daughters, based on a maternal rivalry, perhaps. Mrs. Slade seems to admire Babs Ansley as the more “brilliant” daughter, as compared to her own merely “perfect” daughter. But there’s something more hinted at, for Mrs. Slade seems somehow affronted by Mrs. Ansley, and Mrs. Ansley harbors a silent superiority toward Mrs. Slade.

The slow build of the story derives from the manner by which Mrs. Slade eventually brings up what is bothering her. She broaches the topic by reminiscing about how their grandmothers warned their mothers of the dangers of visiting the Forum and Colosseum basin at night for fear of contracting “Roman fever.” When Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley were girls, the warnings were less effective—though the drop in temperature in the area was still a concern—and young couples would sneak into the closed ruins as a place for illicit trysts, perhaps made more exciting by the risks. Mrs. Ansley, we learn, went out after hours on that fateful trip in the women's youth, contracted pneumonia, and was bedridden for months.

The best short stories urge us on by their pace, letting us absorb details and making us want to see how they add up. Wharton’s story, after a leisurely opening, moves quickly through three revelations, each more surprising and more revealing about the relationship between these two women.

(Stop here and read “Roman Fever,” if you haven't read it, before resuming!)

First, Mrs. Slade reveals the great secret she has been harboring all these years. She knows why Grace went out at night to the Colosseum. Mrs. Slade quotes, verbatim, a letter that Ansley received that night in Rome from Alida’s fiancé Delphin Slade, asking Grace—addressed as “my one darling”—to meet him in the Colosseum after closing. Grace had immediately burned the note, and is genuinely shocked that Alida knows its contents. Mrs. Slade reveals that she wrote the note. She had hoped that a frustrated rendezvous would keep Grace away from her betrothed, about whom she was clearly uncertain. It was generally known that Grace suffered from throat problems and we may infer a certain touch of Poe in a jealous woman sending her rival out into the damp and cold of the Colosseum on a fool’s errand.

Grace went to the Colosseum, became ill, and was put out of commission for a time, then swiftly married Horace. Alida married Delphin, as intended. The revelation, ostensibly an apology for deceiving Grace to the detriment of her health, lets us feel that Mrs. Slade has the upper-hand. She was victorious then, and she has now destroyed Mrs. Ansley's treasured memory of the letter. The one detail, we may suppose, that gave Grace her sense of superiority was her knowing something about Delphin that Alida did not.

Had “Roman Fever” ended here, it would be a satisfying short story, a tale of intrigue and confession. But Wharton has more in store. As we take in Mrs. Slade’s words, demure Mrs. Ansley turns the tables. She did, indeed, go to the Colosseum that night, as the letter indicated, but Delphin was there to meet her! She had replied to the letter, which Alida had never considered, and so Delphin met Grace for an illicit evening in the ruins—all along, Grace Ansley has known something Alida Slade did not suspect.

Mrs. Slade, one-upped beyond belief, quickly tries to save face: Mrs. Ansley had only the letter (and possibly the rendezvous, if her story is to be believed); Mrs. Slade married Delphin and had him for life. Mrs. Ansley concedes that, but replies, “I had Barbara.”

With her killer last line, Wharton flashes the ultimate revelation: that Babs Ansley is actually the daughter of Slade’s husband! Grace was impregnated that night in the Colosseum, and her “pnuemonia” and hasty marriage were subterfuges to mask that fact. Mrs. Ansley leaves the stage victorious, and Mrs. Slade has been cut down to size, leaving us to think about how superior Babs Ansley is to Jenny Slade, how “brilliant.” Wharton’s subtlety knows no bounds, as she makes the final line do all its work through implication. Readers who missed that "Babs" is short for Barbara may find the line quizzical and need to return to the opening where the latter name appears early when Mrs. Ansley murmurs an unheard rebuke at her daughter. In any case, “I had Barbara” does all it needs to when spoken in this context to Mrs. Slade, and the attentive reader knows exactly how the latter must take it.

“Dialogue,” Elizabeth Bowen once said, “is what characters do to each other.” Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” is a sterling illustration of that idea.