Vanities by Jack Heifner
Vanities is a play and I didn’t read it so much as act in it. I played Mary, the sexy, bitchy one (or not so much of a stretch as my friends kept pointing out). It was a good production and I was surprised by how much depth there was to the script. It’s easy to see only the surface of what the three friends are saying to each other and miss all the nuances, so better to see it (done well) than to read it.
The play is three actresses, three acts, a simple unit set with some interchangeable pieces. It’s a great script for community theater and the audience really enjoyed it – especially the women who would have been that age during those periods it covers (60s and 70s). You could see how much the women in the audience were relating to it. It’s a comedy but with very serious undertones, particularly in the third act which can be anything from hysterical to devestating. In fact, we never managed to settle down the third act and it swung wildly from night to night. Always interesting and entertaining, I think, but a very different show depending on how we played it.
There’s much left open to interpretation in the play.