![]() (No spoilers, but her ultimate landing place is an ironic one for a fortune-hunter.) Becky, who says early in the play that “I have nothing but what my wits can afford me,” is soon forced again to live by those wits. But his marriage to Becky enrages and alienates his wealthy aunt Matilda (Wise), and the couple’s situation is worsened by Rawdon’s tendency to run up gambling debts. She rises in station, or at least Becky thinks so, by marrying Rawdon Crawley (David Keohane), a young man from a prominent family. A running joke of the production is that the entire “Vanity Fair” cast expectorates in scorn whenever the word “governess” is used. ![]() Hunter’s “The Whale” and Robert Askins’s “Hand to God,” Elwood delivers a performance of fire and wit that captures Becky’s raffish amorality, unstoppability, and charm.īecky begins as a governess, working for the boorish Sir Pitt (Evan Turissini). As Becky, maneuvering her way through the constricting class structure of early 19th-century British society one canny and audacious step at a time while finding time to enjoy the occasional cigar, Josephine Moshiri Elwood does her best onstage work yet.įulfilling the promise she showed in earlier, Gammons-directed productions of Samuel D. Though her portrayal is perhaps a bit too reticent, Malikah McHerrin-Cobb cuts an elegantly refined figure as Amelia, who unwisely remains in thrall to the memory of her faithless husband George (Stewart Evan Smith) while pursued by a more worthy suitor, William Dobbin (Melendy). The two young women undergo different personal travails in early 19th-century London amid the disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars, experiencing the less lethal but still vicious blows of snobbery and exclusion. ![]() The subsequent dizzy doings of “Vanity Fair” as it sketches a satirical portrait of the British upper class require versatility from Wise and the rest of the cast (five of the seven performers play more than one role), and the actors prove up to that challenge, especially Paul Melendy (speaking of inventive).Īt the play’s center is the long-term, sorely tested friendship between guileful social climber Becky Sharp and gentle, overly trusting Amelia Sedley. ![]()
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