Harsh Lessons

Blue Stockings – Promethean Theatre Ensemble

It is 1896 and four students assemble for they hope will be the first class of female students to be granted degrees at Cambridge. They have to convince the school to first even hold a vote on the issue, let alone win that vote. To do so, they will have to be perfect, and not just academically, and it still may not be enough. This is the setting for Jessica Swale’s play Blue Stockings, getting its Chicago premiere with Promethean Theatre Ensemble.

The show does a good job of avoiding the cliches of stories about overcoming discrimination. There is no easy fix, no moment when the work is done. These students have to be literally perfect to be even considered worthy of trying. Even though the teachers have a few allies in the male faculty, there is no ‘savior’ who magically fixes the problems. I think the show also did a good job in not shying away from the division among the female students along other lines. Even if Cambridge grants degrees to women, it’s still a pretty high and expensive wall to scale for most people, a lesson brought into sharp focus for one of the students whose family lacks the financial resources of her friends.

Where I think the show falters a little is that most of the students get reduced to archetypes and it’s a little difficult to get invested emotionally in their individual arcs. A romantic subplot, despite forming the backbone for one of the main characters’ story, still felt like it was introduced and resolved a little arbitrarily. The teachers get more shading and I found their struggle with balancing tiny victories with tiny compromises more compelling. The male students and faculty, with a couple of exceptions, get reduced to mouth-breathing oafs. I’m not defending them; I’m sure they were jerks in real life, too. It did make it a little difficult to invest in their time on stage. I appreciate the irony that, while dismissing women for being too ’emotional’ and ‘irrational’ for higher education, they’re actually the ones to turn irrationally angry over the smallest imagined slight, but it didn’t make their scenes any easier to watch.

One scene I found particularly effective was the confrontation between the two teachers about how much, if at all, to join forces with the suffragette movement. One sees them as common allies, and a political force that can rally support. The other sees them as radicals that will taint them by association and cost them what little progress they’ve made. The scenes work so well since they both believe their positions in good faith, and it’s the shortest trip to see the parallels to any number of fights today. The struggle between working inside a system to improve it versus trying to topple it from the outside is one social movements have had to reckon with long before and long after this one.

My back and forth over the story aside, the cast is pretty great across the board. Jamie Bragg as the headmistress Mrs. Welsh and Cameron Feagin as teacher Miss Blake are excellent. I saw them both last year in Promethean’s production of Gross Indencency, about the trial of Oscar Wilde, with Bragg in the title role, Feagin as his prosecutor. Their camaraderie and conflict crackles with energy, and is my favorite part of the show. Rounding out the faculty is Patrick Blashill as Mr. Banks, the one male faculty member on their side. He brings an enthusiasm to teaching that is infectious, and he manages to portray the struggle of being true to his beliefs and playing the politics of Cambridge with honesty that doesn’t demand being the center of attention over what the female faculty and students face.

In the balance, I think the students get reduced a bit to archetypes and the show tries to balance too much material in dramatizing the struggle for academic acceptance and the exploration of whether the female students can ‘have it all,’ but on the strength of an extremely talented cast, this is still a show worth your attention.

Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented September 13 – October 13 by Promethean Theatre Ensemble at the Den Theatre, 1331 N Milwaukee Ave., Chicago.

Tickets can be purchased at the box office, at thedentheatre.com or by calling 773-697-3830.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.