Metropolitan PlayhouseVirtual Playhouse Presents

A Screened Reading of

ENEMIES

Written by NEITH BOYCE & HUTCHINS HAPGOOD

Directed by LAURA LIVINGSTON

Featuring

KERSTI BRYAN & NATE WASHBURN

Graphic Settings by MEDUSA STUDIO

Talkback with CAROL DeBOER-LANGWORTHY, Senior Lecturer, Brown University

www.metropolitanplayhose.org/virtualplayhouse
February 13, 2021, 8 p.m.

Just another day in Heck. (Some call it marriage). Nagging husband (nice twist there), eye-rolling wife who would like silence, please. We have the sense that this scene has been played out daily throughout their 15-year wedded-bliss failure. For free-living Bohemians, they seem pretty uptight.

He complains that they don’t talk, but she does talk to other men. She responds that at least the other men are interesting. They’ve both had multiple affairs, of course. They disagree on how to run the household, how to raise their children, and their intimacy. They talk of separating, but no divorce. Divorce is too “common” for people of their status.

It’s obvious that “their souls do not touch”. The insults continue. And thus their “armed truce” lives on.

This 1916 play was written by a married couple. NEITH BOYCE was a feminist and prolific writer who swore she would never marry. Yet she married HUTCHINS HAPGOOD, a journalist. After 1917 his career declined and he basically retired. He also spent time having flagrant affairs. Ah, the good old days.

During the talkback, CAROL DeBOER-LANGWORTHY praised actors KERSTI BRYAN and NATE WASHBURN for having captured all the nuances of the play so well. MEDUSA STUDIO did another amazing job with the graphics, using new tricks to mimic stage movement. Cheers to Metropolitan Playhouse.

-Karen D’Onofrio-