'Women in Jeopardy' cast knows how to make the most of loopy plot
During the Great Feminist Backlash of the 1980s (not to be confused with the feminist backlash in every other decade), a Newsweek cover story proclaimed that a single white woman over 40 with a college education was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get married. That finding has long since been debunked, but its cultural impact remains, hanging over the heads of single women like a knife in a slasher film.
So who can blame a divorced woman who ignores possible warning signs about her new paramour? Just because his employee has disappeared and he was the last one to see her alive (after giving her a DVD of “The Silence of the Lambs”), that doesn’t mean he’s a serial killer, right? And even if her other divorced friends find their CreepMeters going into the red zone in his presence, how do they initiate that conversation on chardonnay Tuesday without sounding a little off the charts (or maybe just jealous) themselves?
That’s the basic premise of Wendy MacLeod’s 2015 “Women in Jeopardy!,” now in a local premiere at First Folio Theatre. While the script lacks the full-on disturbing bite of MacLeod’s best-known black comedy, “The House of Yes,” and its resolution feels decidedly pat, First Folio’s production, directed by Janice L. Blixt, offers plenty of opportunities for the crackerjack cast to exercise their comic chops.
A trio of divorced women in Salt Lake City — acerbic Jo (Lydia Berger Gray), thoughtful Mary (Amy Montgomery), and bubbly Liz (Melanie Keller) — meet up regularly for book clubs and charity “fun runs” to assuage the loneliness of midlife singledom and imminent empty-nester status. But Liz has found a new guy — a dentist, no less — who gets her motor running, even as Jo and Mary think she should be doing a U-turn far away from him.
That’s Jackson (Joe Foust), who favors black ski masks and off-putting comments (delivered in a voice that sounds like a cross between Droopy Dog and Lurch from “The Addams Family”) and who seems less than distraught about the recent disappearance of his attractive hygienist. Jo and Mary’s concerns about Liz deepen when they find out that Jackson plans to take her comely 19-year-old daughter, Amanda (Hayley Burgess) camping at a remote canyon.
When their attempts to dissuade Amanda herself from this plan fail, they enlist both the local police sergeant, who happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Jackson (and is of course also played by Foust) and Amanda’s on-again, off-again snowboarder boyfriend, Trenner (Christopher Vizurraga), into a plan to catch the deadly dentist. Naturally, high jinks ensue, clues mount and the women find themselves thrust into a midlife “Nancy Drew” scenario.
Both Blixt’s production and MacLeod’s script shine brightest when limning the fierce but fraught friendships among the three women. They’re (mostly) past “Sex and the City” neuroses and the desire to grab the brass rings of romance, which means straight talk comes easy to them. Few things are funnier than women who’ve learned to level with themselves and delight in doing so, and MacLeod’s script mostly avoids well-worn jokes about midlife changes for fresher takes. A subplot involving Trenner’s own nascent libidinous interest in librarian Mary turns the farcical convention of the older man chasing a younger woman on its ear. When Mary urges him to hide in her pantry to avoid detection, Trenner exclaims “This is so French!”
Keller, Foust and Gray are First Folio regulars and that chemistry serves them well here, especially in the wordless reactions to the mounting complications. But newcomers Montgomery and Burgess may be the real standouts in this uniformly delicious cast. The former embodies both Mary’s block-captain confidence in organizing capers, right down to the extra granola bars in her backpack, but also her soft heart — one that Sergeant Kirk woos with his own clumsy charm. Burgess’ loopy self-absorption has winning overtones of Cecily Strong’s “Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party” from “Saturday Night Live.”
MacLeod’s attempt to mash up a murder mystery with a contemporary comedy of manners runs out of narrative steam by the end. But the plot, while occasionally woolly, is never boring. And it’s purely delightful to see a show with finely delineated comic roles for women delivered with gusto and heart. These sisters are doing it for themselves.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Women in Jeopardy!” (3 stars)
When: Through Feb. 25
Where: First Folio Theatre at Mayslake Peabody Estate, 31st Street and Route 83, Oak Brook
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $34-$44 at 630-986-8067 and www.firstfolio.org
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