Girl power is coming to the Hong Kong stage - and male or female, so fasten your seatbelts for a rocky ride. For 60 years the acerbic, comic play The Women has ribbed and outraged audiences with its stark portrayal of well-to-do feminine society. Now an adaptation by the American Community Theatre, set in present-day Hong Kong, threatens to alter our view of that poor, misunderstood creature, the wealthy expat wife.
The all-female international cast of 22 (playing 45 roles) has a big-punching ally in waspish playwright Clare Boothe Luce, a feminist who bashed out the work in three days after a nasty parting from her alcoholic first husband.
'The play centres on the society women she had spent five years with,' says director Suzy DeLine, 'and it is acid. It's full of stereotypes: the mother, the gossip, the ingenue, the home-breaker . . . But then, Luce herself was an interesting figure. She was instrumental in founding Life magazine and went to war as a European correspondent. Then she was elected to Congress and later became US ambassador to Italy.'
Luce sets the tone of the play by introducing happily married Mary Haines, who has a beautiful daughter and a spirited group of friends. Into that set she throws ambitious, amoral Crystal Allen, who covets Mary's husband, her lifestyle, the latest fashions and a healthy dollop of gossip and scandal.
'The play was a sensation when it first ran,' says DeLine. 'Reports said many men walked out, calling it unrealistic and horrible. 'No dear,' their wives told them, 'it's really like that'.'
The new adaptation, however, shifting from Park Avenue 1932 to The Peak 2000, is more sympathetic to its characters than the original. 'We're not sugar-coating it, there is realism here,' says De Line. 'But it's not a rant, it's balanced feminism; I read Tatler, but I like to think this is a good play.
