Stage West's Copenhagen Makes Physics Into Fizzy Drama; CTD Stages A Sassy Sisters Rosensweig

Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Feb 25 2010

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The Rosensweigs, formerly of Brooklyn, are women of the world, reuniting in London for the 54th birthday of eldest sis Sara Goode (Marcia Carroll), a twice-divorced international banking exec. Forty-something middle sister "Dr." Gorgeous Teitelbaum (Shannon J. McGrann, hilariously borrowing the honking voice of Fran Drescher) is a wife, mother and budding radio advice show host taking a group of Hadassah ladies on a tour of Europe. Youngest sibling Pfeni (Elizabeth Van Winkle, working a droopy hairdo) avoids the truth about her bisexual (not so much) boyfriend (John Venable) by trotting off to write about gender studies in Tajikistan.

These gals are well brought up, highly educated and quick with the witticisms (though not a single quotable line comes to mind). That they are irritatingly narcissistic isn't part of Wasserstein's storyline. The much-honored playwright, who died in 2006, loved writing about self-obsessed women, especially Jewish women, going back to her Pulitzer winner, The Heidi Chronicles, and further back to her Yale master's thesis play in the 1970s, Uncommon Women and Others, whose characters could be the collegiate versions of the Rosensweigs. In her oeuvre, women have money, brains and Manolos. It's men they can't seem to hold onto.

Buddy Myers

Stage West actors Amber Devlin and Jerry Russell deliver a nuclear in their performance in the science-heavy drama Copenhagen.

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Stage West

821 W. Vickery Blvd.
Fort Worth, TX 76104

Category: Performing Arts Venues

Region: Fort Worth

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Copenhagen
continues through March 21 at Stage West, Fort Worth. Call 817-784-9378 or visit stagewest.org.

The Sisters Rosensweig
continues through March 7 at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. Call 214-828-0094 or visit contemporarytheatreofdallas.com.

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More interesting things happen in Chekhov's play about three sisters (referenced throughout the Wasserstein one), but even without much going on to propel their performances, CTD's cast, all too young for their roles, nevertheless hit the punch lines with panache (particularly McGrann) and look smashing in the costumes by Aaron Patrick Turner. But Rodney Dobbs' design for Sara's upscale London townhouse is terribly tacky and looks like the overstuffed set for every other living room comedy at this theater. And yes, it's nitpicky to mention, but British phones do have a distinctive ring (except here), and someone as self-consciously snobby as Sara Goode would know not to put a "grow" in the pronunciation of "Groton."

Uncommon women don't make such common mistakes.