Theater Review: The Heiress Can’t Make Jessica Chastain a Mouse
7 / 10
There's unmarriageable and then there's unmarriageable: The Catherine Sloper of Henry James's Washington Square is an 1850s heiress of 'plain, dull, gentle countenance' who 'devoted her pocket money to the purchase of cream cakes' and is 'decidedly not clever.' The Catherine Sloper of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 play The Heiress (which is merely 'suggested' by Washington Square) is a bright young thing buried under a bushel of insecurities, crippled by an awkward fashion sense and near-cataleptic social anxiety. (In William Wyler's film version, Olivia de Havilland was slapped with a pair of Mike Dukakis eyebrows to uglify her into premature spinsterhood.)

