BWW Reviews: Nothing Wrong with (or Vital About) THE HEIRESS
By: Maggie Yates Oct. 22, 2014
A word I've been thinking about lately in regards to theatre is "vitality." It describes storytelling that is prompt and essential, qualities that make a production provocative, relatable, and entertaining. With this in mind, I must admit that The Heiress, by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, is a strange production choice for the Santa Barbara City College Theatre Group, a company with budget enough to ensure excellent actors and detailed, inspired stagecraft for pretty much any play they decide to mount. There was nothing wrong with SBCC's production of The Heiress, but there wasn't anything particularly vital about it, either.
As always, SBCC presented a well-designed show with stunning stagecraft indicative of craftspeople and designers with good taste and a subtle touch. Costumes were grand and opulent, and the cast did a capable job with the material. However, when even the director uses the phrase "old-fashioned" to describe aspects of the play, I wonder why a company would choose to produce a show with such a lack of vitality.
The Heiress is a play about polite characters whose actions have fleeting, inconsequential effects on each other and the plot as a whole. Catherine Sloper (Avery Clyde) is a woman in New York in 1850 who, upon her father's death, will receive a handsome inheritance in addition to the already generous inheritance she's received from her deceased mother. Her father, Dr. Sloper (Tom Hinshaw) has never forgiven Catherine for his wife's death in childbirth, and openly disparages his daughter for failing to live up to his late wife's vivaciousness and beauty. In no way is the script subtle about this unhealthy father-daughter dynamic, and Dr. Sloper openly complains about his daughter to everyone, Catherine included. When Morris Townsend (Josh Jenkins), a loafing bachelor without financial means calls on Catherine, Dr. Sloper immediately sees him for what he is: a "mercenary"-the 1850 equivalent of a gold-digger. Catherine, having been told her entire life that she's not good enough, not clever enough, not beautiful enough, immediately falls prey to Morris's charms. Dr. Sloper forbids the union, which Catherine sees as a malicious attempt to prevent her happiness. Catherine and Morris plan to elope, but without Dr. Sloper's consent, Catherine will not receive his portion of her inheritance. Only interested in Catherine's full inheritance, Morris never shows up for their midnight marriage.
The cast of talented local actors includes Kate Bergstrom, Katherine Bottoms, Evan Bell, Marion Freitag, Tom Hinshaw, Leslie Ann Story, Leslie Gangle Howe, and Josh Jenkins. These actors are all accomplished, and it's too bad they don't have more to do. Avery Clyde (Catherine Sloper) did an excellent job modifying her physicality in relation to the characters with whom she shared scenes: in the first act she was meek and apologetic with her father, intelligent and excitable with her aunt Levinia (Gangle Howe), and love-struck with Morris (Jenkins); in the second act she was a more forceful, less naïve character with both her father and Morris. This type of character development is important in any show, but it fell flat in The Heiress due to the play's inherent lack of conflict. Whether or not Catherine and Morris receive her father's blessing (and therefore her full inheritance), she's still the heiress of a modest fortune from her mother's side-it's the difference between being rich and being super-rich. The more sentimental conflict is also weak: whether or not Catherine marries Morris, she'll still be denied the experience of mutual love. It's obvious that Morris is only after her money; again, this lack of subtlety is not the fault of the actor-it's written into the script, which has Morris spelling out his intentions to the audience whenever Catherine isn't in the room. Morris's presence provides a bare modicum of conflict, hardly enough to support a three-hour production. Even if Catherine decided to marry Morris just to spite her father-which would actually be a more interesting choice-once again the conflict is nullified by the fact that she'll remain wealthy regardless of Dr. Sloper's consent.
Is this a play about a woman whose heart turns cruel after being jilted by a lover? Is it a story about overcoming the effects of a lifetime of emotional abuse? Is it a coming-of-age, female-empowerment story? These concepts are lost in a morass of upper crust, 19th-century civility and overt storytelling. The Heiress is, on and below the surface, about a girl with limited social capabilities trying to stand up to her father in the only way she can find: by putting her hopes for acceptance and love on the first man who pays her any attention whatsoever. To a modern sensibility, this makes her character seem flighty and naïvely impulsive rather than passionate and spontaneous. The lack of substantial consequences left me uninvested in whether or not Catherine ever married Morris, or whether or not Dr. Sloper ever learned to appreciate his daughter.
I certainly take no issue with theatre created for the sake of entertainment rather than for the sake of making a social or artistic statement. I also appreciate the value of basic theater produced with the intention of teaching neophyte actors and designers the craft of the stage. Unfortunately, The Heiress didn't fall into any of these categories. The cast was seasoned and the design-work was impeccable, but The Heiress spent too much time over clarifying a non-complex plot to the audience. The production ultimately has no central theme of any particular strength, and is forgettable. There are a number of plays that accomplish the ideas presented in The Heiress in a more potent, less stilted, "old-fashioned" tone; for example, George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession accommodates the same topics of men attempting to take advantage of wealthy women, female empowerment, and unsavory familial relations-but manages it in a subtle, complex manner that eschews archaic daintiness and makes bold statements about each subject. Even setting The Heiress in 1950 rather than 1850 would have given the flimsy thematic issues a sharper edge and a platform of relateability. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with The Heiress, but theatre without apparent purpose isn't really theatre-it's just three hours of watching actors maneuver around set pieces.
The Heiress
Directed by Judy Garey
SBCC Theatre Group
October 17th-November 1st
Santa Barbara City College
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