Word: heiresses
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...just a move from one Eaton Square town house to another. When The Wings of the Dove was offered, she thought, "Oh, not another costume drama--and in the period that I've done to death." True, but Kate, who prods her lover Merton to woo dying American heiress Millie Theale (Alison Elliott), is a more complex lady of breeding. She and Merton recall two other devious Europeans, also out to fleece a rich American girl, in James' The Portrait of a Lady. Here, though, the best role and much of the rooting interest go to the schemer...
...Heiress is more broadly embraceable than James's work, the reason may be that its authors, Ruth and Augustus Goetz, have streamlined and softened a brittle, merciless story into something like exquisite melodrama. The characters, for whom James himself had little affection, have more obvious motivations (the extreme foregrounding of Dr. Sloper's grief for his wife, for example) and higher tides of emotional exclamation ("He must love me, someone must want me," Catherine yells. "I have never had that!"). Moreover, the authors don't ignore that dictum of audience-pleasing, "Let the underdog have her day." In fact, though...
...what cost? Catherine's behavior in the second act proclaims a cleverness and a sharp pragmatic bent which she has signally lacked beforehand. The Heiress seems to allow Catherine redemption on the condition that she acquire intelligence and agency; like Dr. Sloper himself, the playwrights will do nothing for Catherine so long as she is plain and retiring...
Whether or not her transformation is convincing--and Plum largely carries it off--one hates to see the work as a whole adopt the values of its own object of scorn. Simply in retitling the work The Heiress, the Goetzes define Catherine's character through her financial prospects. Nor do we delight in witnessing Catherine exchange her youthful naivete for such a bitter, scaly adulthood. This sour apple doesn't fall far from Dr. Sloper's withered tree...
...Heiress would be a better play if the Goetzes had as much compassion for Catherine as this cast and crew do, or if they at least portrayed her as consistently as James does. Nonetheless, small theatres don't come much better than the Lyric, and The Heiress is an evening full of riches indeed...