Reviewed by Dr. Tiffany Knight Raymond, PhD and Theron Raymond (6th grader)
At part of its 76th season, Little Lake Theatre Company brings Kate Hamill’s 2018 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, Little Women, to the stage. While Alcott is typically associated with New England, she was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Like many, I’ve read Little Women and seen multiple film versions (although not all seven film adaptations) from the 1933 version with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March to the most recent – Greta Gerwig’s 2019 Academy Award-nominated version. All this is to say Little Lake takes on the storied history with this much beloved, canonical classic.
[Editor’s Note: Be warned. Because of the popularity of the book and multiple film adaptations, the following information will not be considered spoilers.]
However, Little Lake is not daunted by the greats in bringing the four March sisters to the stage. Instead, they rise to the level of the greats thanks to director Meighan Lloyd Harding. Pacing-wise, the play does feel a bit long due to chronic set changes that slow the action and could be accelerated or simplified.
A barometric pressure test for any Little Women is to see if it has one tearing up at Beth’s passing. Harding’s production finds that valve with ease. Beth (Sophia Willis) is childlike. Willis is still in high school, occupying that liminal space between childhood and womanhood, which makes her Beth so authentic. She earnestly hugs her doll in nearly every scene. Prop designer Alex Keplar makes her doll heartbreakingly relatable with its matted hair – long-time lovie status made manifest. However, as someone long challenged with health issues, Beth also has a wisdom beyond her year and is a calming force as the “conscious” of the family.
Little Lake’s Amy (Kaylyn Farneth) is particularly petulant. She’s a bit exhausting and one-note as a tantrum-prone teen who’s coddled, yet quick to step on others with little disregard for their feelings. She’s the kind of neighbor who delights in reporting you to the HOA for overgrown hedges while simultaneously blaming you when her car clips your mailbox.
Meg (Carina Iannarelli) is often the least memorable March sister as she’s textbook conventional. Iannarelli upends that and shines. She transforms Meg from stern governess to starry-eyed bride to post-partum, exhausted mother of twins. Her character evolution is the broadest of the four sisters, and Iannarelli authentically conveys that spectrum-crossing journey. Meg stumbles back to her childhood home deranged with exhaustion and the toils of motherhood. Harding has Meg’s formerly coiffed hair askew in wanton tendrils, symbolic of her frazzled mental state.
Jo immediately embraces Meg’s return as a chance to return to the past. Meg recognizes the impossibility of that when she quietly asserts, “I’m Marmee now,” which is what the March girls call their mother. Parenting is wearing, but Meg will keep showing up.
Authoress Jo (Adrien-Sophia Curry) is the nucleus of Little Women, and Curry finds new depths in Jo. Jo is not just a woman determined to write in an era where that was unconventional. She’s also trapped between worlds. She is the most resistant to change, and her commitment to playing dress-up and acting out her plays of their childhood has a wistful nostalgia to it. The times have moved on, but she feels a bit stunted. Ultimately, it is her writing that saves her, not Laurie (a heartfelt performance by Sam Lander), the boy next door who wants to save her.
After a particularly bitter fight with Amy, Jo announces the two sisters have “nothing in common.” Watching Harding’s realization of Little Women, what strikes one is Hamill’s adaptation uses the four March sisters to literalize Robert Frost’s famous poem from 1915, “The Road Not Taken.” Frost pauses at a juncture and muses: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler.” The four March sister emerges from the same childhood, and yet they travel four different roads.
Hamill helps us see the conventional Meg is no better or worse than her opposite, the unconventional Jo. All four sisters are a paradox in different ways that leave each pulled between worlds. Little Women ultimately still resonates 150+ years after its publication because it explores the conditions of the human condition. We can each only be one traveler, and yet, we long for more.
– TKR, Ph.D and TR
Little Lake Theatre Company’s production of Little Women runs through October 13, 2024 at Little Lake Theatre (500 Lakeside Drive, Canonsburg, PA). Purchase tickets online at https://www.littlelake.org/.