Theater review: 'The Female of the Species' at Geffen Playhouse

Whether Joanna Murray-Smith’s “The Female of the Species” is a debate masquerading as a farce or a farce masquerading as a debate is hard to tell. What is clear is that the play, which opened Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse under the direction of Randall Arney, allows Annette Bening to roar like a comic lioness and never let you forget who’s queen of this theatrical jungle.

With a raspy, imperious voice and a stylishly chopped haircut, Bening transforms herself into Margot Mason, a feminist icon struggling to write her next book. An aging radical living in literary luxury, she’s casting about for a new polemic, one that will revolutionize the gender status quo every bit as much as her landmark offering, “The Cerebral Vagina.” (This gag title, often repeated, tips off which way the satiric winds are blowing.)

Into this sitcom scenario bolts Molly Rivers (Merritt Wever), a university dropout whose life has been upended by Margot’s ever-changing ideological certainties. A former student of Margot’s, she's wielding a gun and a grudge, and her mission to teach the meaning of another important V-word, vendetta, isn’t simply because Margot told her she had no talent for writing.

Molly’s mother abandoned her after reading “The Cerebral Vagina,” which ordered women to find their identities outside of motherhood, and this lost soul ended up throwing herself in front of a train, clutching a copy of Margot's seminal text. Compounding matters, Molly, spellbound by Margot’s doctrinaire pronouncements, had an operation so that she can never have children. (The poor dear must have taken “Madame Ovary,” another of Margot's masterworks, too much to heart.) 

 “The Female of the Species” was inspired by a frightening real-life incident that happened to Murray-Smith’s fellow Australian Germaine Greer, author of the groundbreaking 1970s feminist classic “The Female Eunuch.” In 2000, Greer was held hostage and terrorized by a troubled female student at her farmhouse in England. Murray-Smith has claimed that the similarities between her character and Greer end there, although Greer, not buying it, has called the playwright “an insane reactionary.” 

The animosity is understandable. Margot is a caricature of feminism, a rabble-rouser whose ideological passions blind her to human complexity. An intellectual fraud, she cares more about her lavish lifestyle than the lives that are crashing and burning under her influence.
 
The damaging effects of Margot are on vivid display when her daughter, Tess (Mireille Enos), a wife and mother (and thus a disappointment to Margot), arrives on the scene in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Discovering Margot gagged and handcuffed, she quickly finds herself in sympathy with Molly.  

The farce’s contrivances, which play out in Margot’s posh study (fetchingly appointed by scenic designer Takeshi Kata), spiral further when men enter the picture. First comes Tess’ dull businessman husband, Bryan (David Arquette), followed by Frank, an irate and gruffly sexy taxi driver (Josh Stamberg), and then Margot’s gay publisher Theo (Julian Sands). Stamberg creates the most humorous stir, but then his character’s chauvinistic outbursts are the most zingily retrograde (“Women want a man who knows how to handle two things for them really, really well: Foreplay. And taxes.”)

Yes, there’s some hoary shtick on hand, and the plot sags under the pileup of its far-fetched occurrences.  But Bening brings maximum gusto to her portrayal of a larger-than-life monster, and for all the heightened theatricality, she still renders Margot a recognizable, if incomplete, type.  

The supporting cast is mostly sharp — Wever, a standout on the Showtime series “Nurse Jackie,” is particularly convincing in her handling of the play’s audacious setup, and Enos, a supporting player on HBO’s “Big Love,” utilizes dizzying mannerism to strong effect in Tess’ monologue on the relentlessness of motherhood.
 
But Arney’s production hasn't figured out what to do with actors when they’re not active in a scene. As characters subside into the background, it sometimes seems as if the performers have been switched into dormant mode.  

Murray-Smith’s political points about the chaotic legacy of feminism might be more cogent had Margot been made more flesh and blood than parody. The character embodies all of the distasteful excesses yet none of the committed virtues of a movement that challenged society to rethink the fundamental inequality of the sexes.
   
In choosing easy laughs over more complicated historical truth, the playwright shortchanges the potential of “The Female of the Species,” and potential, as we know from feminists and other civil rights champions, is a terrible thing to waste.

-- Charles McNulty

follow him on Twitter @ charlesmcnulty

"The Female of the Species," Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 14. $65 to $85. (310) 208-5454 or www.geffenplayhouse.com. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Photos: Top: Annette Bening and Merritt Wever. Bottom: Mireille Enos, David Arquette and Bening. Credit: Ann Johansson / For The Times
 

Comments

[Jim]

This is a rather silly review. The play is intended as a satire of feminist extremism but the reviewer is upset that it doesn't pay sufficient homage to feminist achievements!

I think that has been done already, sir. Many times over. Ad nauseum. By mainstream media types just like you for several decades now.

We get it. You like feminism. Some don't and think parts of it are actually bordering on retarded. Let those people finally have their say.

[Laura]

The reviewer missed the boat on the strengths of this play. The laughs are very intellectual, not silly all of the time.
Margot is a very complete character.
The play points out the positive and negative aspects of extreme feminism. It was wonderful to hear the arguments FOR the devotion of a life to a single cause, and the place for agitprop in society.

[dan]

This is a hopelessly miscast, uneven, production, which is never a surprise, as the Geffen can't get anything right. This play is not stage worthy. At least Matthew Modine was kind enough to give an intermission to get us the hell out of there.

[ArtsBeatLA]

^ How is Matthew Modine relevant to this discussion? Flabby thinking -- surely you are referring to the playwright or the director of the recent Geffen show Modine ACTED in?!

Despite this lukewarm review, “The Female of the Species” sounds like a play I would like to experience. I am certainly intrigued by its historical context (the real-life episode where the notoriously acerbic Greer was terrorised.)

[Mark]

This play is shrill, unfunny, lacking in insight and painful to sit through -- a tangle of cliches. Ms. Greer's opinion of the playwright is spot on; one can only imagine her pained reaction to Ms. Bening's monotonous braying.

[Theatergoer]

Dan:
You said the Geffen can't get anything right? Wow! I drive up from Orange County all the time and am never disappointed. But I get your anger, dude; that's how I feel about the Laguna Playhouse. What a waste of space. So I drive up to LA to see theater...Unless SCR has something going...

[Silverlakejim]

Ditto on the kudos for South Coast Repertory. This is the most consistent theater company in Southern California-always worth the drive to Orange County. The nearby Geffen on the other hand...

[richard]

Waste of time and money. The Geffen is sinking fast.

[David]

This review confuses mere exposition of plot with critical analysis. The play confuses wordiness with wit. Lots of sound and fury signifying very little. Total waste of time.

[sherry]

This review is more of an editorial recap of the play than an actual review. How about sharing some unique opinions about the production itself as opposed to the play, playwright and believability factor. I know the play. It's intended to be a satire. Check. Even if I did not know the play...Is it good? What is your impression of the actors' performances? Was the direction worth seeing? A true review would be great to read so that I might decide whether or not to see this production.