Theater Review: The Housewives of Mannheim

Compelling Performance Highlights This One
By Lauren Yarger
Pheonix Vaughn gives a compelling performance as May Black, a Brooklyn housewife trying to keep things running on the home front while her husband is away at war in Alan Brody’s The Housewives of Mannheim Off-Broadway at 59/59 Theaters.

May has a battle of her own, as well, as she fights to come to terms with her sexuality after longtime friend, Billie Friedhoff (an engaging Corey Tazmania), who sells linens to help make ends meet, makes romantic advances. May might never have considered such a relationship before the arrival of the sophisticated and beautiful Sophie Birnbaum (Natalie Mosco), who escapedsthe Nazi terror in her native Austria to relocate in the women’s apartment building.

May idolizes the independent Sophie, who was a concert pianist before the war and who also happens to be a lesbian. May craves knowledge. She wants to visit museums with Sophie, listen to her recordings, and maybe even take some college classes – something she’s never thought much about because she always assumed good looks were all a woman needed to get ahead in life. And though she’s supposed to yearn for the return of her husband, she starts to wonder whether any of those opportunities will be available to her once he’s home again.

Making a fourth at May’s table for coffee and conversation is contest-entering and label-collecting, but emphatically not lesbian Alice Cohen (Wendy Peace), who tries to keep May from coming under the influence of the other two women.

All of the performances, directed by Suzanne Barabas, are solid, but Vaughn’s emotional portrayal really stands out as a woman who wants so much more than keeping house, but who feels trapped in her kitchen by society’s rules and her own fears about what she wants. A very nice metaphor is given in the display of a fictional Vermeer painting titled "The Housewives of Mannheim" that May goes to see (all by herself – a big deal for a woman in 1944 – to the Metropolitan Museum of art) featuring four women around a table, which, in May’s mind, freezes them in their period of history. The scene is recreated with the four Brooklyn women.

This cast reprises their roles from the original New Jersey Rep company production.

The Housewives of Mannheim runs through June 6 at 59/59 theaters, 59 East 59th St., NYC. Tickets are available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at http://www.ticketcentral.com/. For more information visit www.59E59.org.

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