Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
A Screened Reading
of

CONSTANCY
Written by Neith Boyce

Featuring
ELISABETH AHRENS & PAUL BOMBA

Directed by LAURA LIVINGSTON

Talkback with ELLEN GAINOR, Professor of Performing Arts, Cornell University

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

May 30, 2020, 8 p.m.

This one-act drama takes us back to 1915, which is not so different from today. Rex is a lothario (“playah”). Moira was his lover for one long emotionally painful year. Then Rex ran off with another woman. While he was away, he wrote oh so many letters to Moira, telling her of his love for his new partner, that he now knows what real love is. But that is the past. For tonight Moira hears a familiar voice call her name from outside the moonlit window. Rex has returned!

She invites him in and welcomes him back with a smile. Rex (the weasel) thinks he has returned triumphant into her loving arms. Moira, bless her little heart, has other ideas. No chance, Romeo. We are just friends. Bwahaha. Rex goes through every man-ploy ever invented. Angst, anger, reprimands, charm, pleading for forgiveness. “You must be in love with someone else!” Nope. “You never loved me!” Nope. The only thing missing is “You must be a Lesbian!” I guess men didn’t try that one back then. Or at least not in stage plays.

This self-absorbed idiot just can’t get it through his head. She just doesn’t love him anymore. He explains that he can’t be tied down, that’s not part of his nature. He can be in love without being faithful. She informs him of her policy: No second chances. No love without constancy. He calls her a “spoiled child”. He says that women have no souls. Back at ya, Pretty Boy. Curtain.

What a savory treat this reading was. Yum. Moira never raises her voice, never stops smiling. She can’t be baited. This is very much in keeping with the feminist movement of the era and the feelings of author Neith Boyce. In all she wrote four plays, each focused on women’s sexuality and personal relationships. CONSTANCY is based on the true story of her summer neighbors, Mabel Dodge and John Reed, both famous in their own right. They all lived among the Bohemian crowd of Greenwich Village, where free-love, psychiatry, and social experimentation were the rage. They were determined to help free women from the chains of the Victorian Era. We should be pleased that they succeeded.

-Karen D’Onofrio-