Abby Armstrong '13 and Anneke Reich '13 did not want to put on a cookie-cutter production for their senior thesis. The two had teamed up their sophomore year to stage The Wild Party and, as Armstrong put it in an interview with JustArts, bonded "over clusterf*** musicals that are dark and messed up and feature themes like abuse." That led them to Kurt Weill's Lady in the Dark, an out-of-print musical set in New York City during World War II. Armstrong directed a talented 12-person cast in the two-hour, 30-minute production, including Reich, who starred as Liza Elliot, the editor of a fashion magazine.

Lady in the Dark is a complicated challenge for any cast and crew-a musical that refuses to be pigeonholed. The play features a fantastic combination of serious drama, witty humor and surrealist dancing and singing. The play flows in and out of reality, with three distinct dream scenes interrupting the dialogue (all of the songs, with the exception of "My Ship" in the closing scene, are sung during Elliot's dreams). Lady in the Dark's cast and crew were more than up for the task.

An unhappy Elliot begins the play by consenting to undergo psychoanalysis, embarking on a lengthy process to rediscover herself. Immediately, we are thrown into the first dream, where a glamorous Elliot is overrun by invitations and admirers. We quickly learn that, in actuality, she has rejected such a swanky lifestyle, and Elliot's refusal to "compete" for men is a theme throughout the musical.

Central to the musical's plot is Elliot's struggle with choosing a partner. For much of the play, she strains to choose between a father figure (Kendall Nesbitt, played by Ben Gold '13, Elliot's longtime boyfriend who is still married to his wife) and a lover figure (Miranda "Randy" Curtis, played by Julia Davidovitz '15, a famous Hollywood actress who courts Elliot). After the first dream, Nesbitt decides to divorce his wife and marry Elliot, which alarms her and leads into the second dream. During the wedding-themed dream, Nesbitt takes Elliot to buy a ring from co-worker Charlie Johnson (Jonathan Young MFA '14). Elliot panics, at which point Curtis appears. After the dream ends, Curtis and Elliot go on a date.

In the end, Elliot realizes that she is unhappy with both Nesbitt and Curtis and instead chooses Johnson, who represents the husband figure. It was an abrupt decision that left a bitter taste in the viewer's mouth. After hours of a slowly budding romance between Elliot and Curtis, the change in direction felt like an undoing of all that the play had accomplished in the previous two and a half hours. While I understand the writer's decision to end the play in the way that it did, the ending turned a relatable, personable story into utter chaos.
My favorite part of the play was the third dream-the circus scene. The dream was wildly over the top, with sensationalized acting and elaborate costumes. Zach Smith '15 played an animated ringmaster, leading a delightfully complex choreographed set. At one point in the scene, Smith sat down in the midst of the crowd, and his interactions with the audience were entertaining.

Besides the sour ending and the play's length (between the delayed start time and the lengthy intermission, the audience filed out three hours after arriving), it truly was an entertaining, well-constructed production. Reich's character begins as impatient and disinterested to a fault-the opening dialogue between Elliot and her psychoanalyst (Alex Jacobs MFA '14) felt rushed and impersonal. By conquering her demons and beginning to understand what troubled her, Elliot becomes more confident and expressive. Reich aced the role, particularly during the dream scenes, in which her facial expressions brilliantly exhibited her exacerbated confusion.

This production of Lady in the Dark was significantly different from the original in one key aspect-in the original, Curtis was a male character. Armstrong made a risky decision in casting Davidovitz in the role, but I appreciated the extra layer of complexity that it added to Reich's character. Rather than Elliot simply cheating on Nesbitt, her flirt with lesbianism added another side to her. Davidovitz's performance as the confused starlet was admirable as well.

The musical also did a great job of appropriately mixing humor into the turmoil. Young's character in particular drew a lot of laughs as the smooth-talking bachelor using witty one-liners on the female members of the cast. Alison DuBois (Eliza Dumais '14) was fantastically sassy, and the rest of the cast had humorous moments as well.
Armstrong and Reich took a risk in staging Lady in the Dark. The musical has been off Broadway for decades, leaving the duo with very little material to work with. The result was chaotic-simultaneously dark, humorous and dramatic, yet somehow, it all fit together into a thoroughly entertaining performance.
*