Americana

By L.M.

from the play by ANNA CORA MOWATT

At first the premise seems perilously cute. The time is "nippy fall, 1973," and the ladies of the "Long Island Masque and Wig Society" gather to run through a rehearsal of their latest production -- a musical based on an 1845 play, Fashion; or Life in New York, by Anna Cora Mowatt, who was America's first woman playwright. So this is the 19th century Americana of Mrs. Mowatt's quaint, forgotten classic refracted through the 20th century Americana of suburban matrons in amateur theatricals. Except that the players in Manhattan's McAlpin Rooftop Theater are all totally professional.

It takes only a song or two to establish that the curious idea works in a delightful way. Mrs. Mowatt's cautionary tale has the pretentious Mrs. Tiffany bankrupting her husband with her ostentation and trying to marry off her daughter to a phony French count. The women, playing all roles -- male and female -- except for Count Jolimaitre (Ty McConnell), perform with just the right note of light camp. They all but twirl hypothetical mustaches. The songs by Don Pippin and Steve Brown have a rollicking charm. When Mrs. Tiffany (Mary Jo Catlett) embarks on her fantasy of "My daughter the Countess," she is aquiver with such an exuberance of social-climbing greed that one almost hopes she makes it.

L.M.

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