If you want to see a play that will drop you into the past as well as make you think about the future, go see Enchanted April at the Taproot Theatre in Seattle. www.taproottheatre.org. It’s running right now, through October 24th.
Enchanted April, written and set in the 1920s in the period between the two World Wars, is a story about moving from darkness into light. Two British housewives, a young socialite, and a woman well past her “prime” journey from dreary post-war England to sunlit Italy, and in the process come alive again. The Taproot Theatre’s intimate venue is perfect for entering into these women’s lives, as we easily shift between their living rooms, the women’s club, or the train station.
But to me, this play had a deeper meaning than recovering one’s personal light. This is a story about women’s freedom, which resonated with my own personal history. Although watching a story replete with flapper dress and distinctive 1920s slang, I easily saw myself in the hippie garb of 1970, my mother in her 1950s full-skirted dress with an apron, and even my tattooed daughters – all of us struggling with the same issues this play raised. What does it mean to be a liberated woman? What is a good girl, or a bad girl? How do we live a full life in a society that limits our options? These were questions women asked themselves in 1920, or 1970, and are still asking today.
The main reason I love the theatre so much is that it never goes stale. You think you’re going to see a “period piece” that will simply amuse you with its quaint mores, and then you realize that the past is never fully gone. As William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Technorati Tags: theatre, history, play, Taproot Theatre, Enchanted April, 1920, World War, liberated, issues, William Faulkner
