The Woman Hater by Frances Burney, and: The Belle’s Strategem by Hannah Cowley

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Woman Hater by Frances Burney, and: The Belle’s Strategem by Hannah Cowley Angelina Del Balzo Frances Burney, The Woman Hater. A Benefit reading directed by Everett Quinton; producing director, Nathan Winkelstein, with discussion facilitated by Tara K. Menon (Harvard University). Presented by Red Bull Theater in New York, NY, live on Zoom on January 25, 2021. Visual design by David M. Barber. Costumes by Sara Jean Tosetti. Zoom Coordinator, Betsy Ayer. OBS coordinator, Jessica Fornear. With Nick Westrate (Young Waverley), Arnie Burton (Wilmot/Old Waverley), Bill Army (Steward), Matthew Saldivar (Sir Roderick), Veanne Cox (Lady Smatter), Jenne Vath (Nurse/Prim/Phebe), Cherie Corinne Rice (Sophia/Joyce), and Rebecca S’Manga Frank (Eleonora). Hannah Cowley, The Belle’s Strategem. A Benefit Reading directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch; producing director, Nathan Winkelstein, with discussion facilitated by Dustin D. Stewart (Columbia University). Presented by Red Bull Theater in New York, NY, live on Zoom on February 22, 2021. Adaptation of the original script by Davis McCallum. Zoom coordinator, Betsy Ayer. OBS coordinator and sound designer, Jessica Fornear. With Lilli Cooper (Letitia Hardy), Santino Fontana (Doricourt), Peter Jay Fernandez (Old Hardy), Chauncy Thomas (Sir George Touchwood), Jasmine Batchelor (Lady Frances Touchwood), Tony Jenkins (Saville), Heather Alicia Simms (Mrs. Racket), Lauren Karaman (Miss Ogle/Kitty Willis), Neal Bledsoe (Villers), Aaron Krohn (Flutter), Mark Bedard (Courtall), Cecil Baldwin (Silvertongue and ensemble). As the COVID-19 pandemic wore on and indoor venues remained closed in North America and Europe, various performance organizations looked to online formats. Red Bull Theater, an Off-Broadway theater in New York specializing in the performance of lesser-known classical work, responded to the pandemic ambitious slate of digital programming. Spring 2021 featured livestreamed play readings of two underappreciated plays from the long eighteenth century that share similar cultural DNA, despite significantly divergent stage histories: Frances Burney’s blend of satire and sentimental comedy The Woman-Hater (1802) and Hannah Cowley’s comedy of manners The Belle’s Stratagem (1780). Both events were staged as part [End Page 1005] of a benefit reading series, with admission on a “pay-what-you-can” donation basis. Red Bull Theater generously made the recorded live performances available for five days after the initial performances, making the “live” performances accessible to those in a variety of time zones. (Both the conversations that these performances engendered and the opportunity for audiences to support Red Bull Theater via an ethical artist compensation remain ongoing.) The categorization of these two productions as benefit readings does not, perhaps, fully convey their expertise and creativity. Though The Woman-Hater was never given a public performance in Burney’s lifetime, her prominence as a novelist has drawn critical attention to the play. In 2002, Broadview Press published Peter Sabor and Geoffrey Sill’s critical edition of both The Woman-Hater and Burney’s satire of the Bluestockings, The Witlings, and in 2008, the play had its world premiere at Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London. Burney’s lack of initial success as a dramatist contrasts with Cowley’s renown as one of few women playwrights to find success. The Belle’s Stratagem was a success in its initial run at Covent Garden in 1780 and was steadily performed for many decades thereafter. But, like much of the eighteenth-century repertoire, its appearance after the late nineteenth century has been sporadic. Recently, major productions were staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2005 and at the Southwark Playhouse in 2011; perhaps the renewed attention that creative productions by early modern women in many media now receive will enable Stratagem to be performed more consistently again. Given audiences’ limited familiarity with these texts, in particular, and with eighteenth-century drama more broadly, the program notes for both Red Bull productions faced a lot of heavy lifting. Dustin D. Stewart’s program note for Stratagem nicely balanced historic contextualization of the plays with a distillation of some of the play’s themes, such as its contrast of city to country and the significance of its emphasis on authenticity and identity. I would have liked to see more of this kind of contextualization provided in the program notes for The Woman-Hater; Tara...