Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Zadie Smith’s THE WIFE OF WILLESDEN is elevated by a boisterous, scenery-chewing performance by Clare Perkins

• By drediman
• April 7, 2023
• No Comments

Currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, you’ll find The Wife of Willesden, the debut play by award-winning novelist Zadie Smith. Originally presented by the Kiln Theatre, the production was previously seen both across the pond at the aforementioned North West London theater and just recently at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA (A.R.T. is co-presenting the American premiere of the play). Set in a London pub, the work updates Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales via the character of Alvita, a middle-aged British Jamaican woman who has no qualms speaking her mind about womanhood.

To say that all eyes are on Alvita is an understatement, particularly as boisterously embodied by actress Clare Perkins (more on her performance later), who bulldozes her way to the center of attention. After regaling the audience with an extended prologue describing her unsuccessful marriages to each of her five husbands, Alvita delves into a parable of the perfect union. For a first time dramatist, Smith admirably excels in the delicate art of theatrical storytelling, making the jump from prose to sustained, inventively-wrought dialogue fairly easily. Despite expounding the wonders of womanhood over the course of the evening, Smith’s play ultimately strikes me less as a work about the fairer sex than a mantra about how to live life to its fullest – both emotionally and sexually. By extension, the play is also testament to how storytelling and unbridled expression can empower those who have the courage to take their reins.

The play’s pub setting calls to mind another production from the U.K. playing in the city – the National Theatre of Scotland’s bewitching production of The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart currently running at the McKittrick Hotel (I highly urge you to catch it if you can). As exuberantly directed by Indhu Rubasingham, the stage action reaches into the audience, encouraging us to actively partake in the storytelling. At the center of it all is the force of nature that is Perkins, whose sensational, scenery-chewing performance does full justice to the larger-than-life character of Alvita, almost single-handedly – with the robust support of an ensemble cast – keeping the show afloat.

RECOMMENDED

THE WIFE OF WILLESDEN
Off-Broadway, Pay
Brooklyn Academy of Music (in association with American Repertory Theatre)
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 16