After traveling to India for her daughter's engagement party in India, playwright Leslie Harrell Dillen was inspired to write "Two Wives in India." Her play may seem like an accurate depiction of what happens when two middle-aged women travel to Delhi for wedding festivities, but the playwright's limited knowledge about India is conspicuous as unsophisticated stereotypes and flinch-inducing soliloquies litter the two-hour production.
In "Two Wives," directed by M. Bevin O'Gara and playing at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre until Nov. 21, Becca and Mary Jo travel to India in order to participate in several pre-marital ceremonies for the marriage of Emily, Becca's daughter and Mary Jo's stepdaughter. Dillen takes audience members on a simulated trip through Indian culture with a henna festival and a memorable stop at the Taj Mahal as Becca and Mary Jo tour the home nation of Emily's fiance Jaskanvar.
Both of the matriarchs are forced to deal with interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts in the days leading up to the wedding. Though both were married to Emily's father, Sam, Becca and Mary Jo have disparate personalities. Becca is a strong and independent interior designer while Mary Jo is a romantic-novel writer, mourning the recent death of Sam.
Throughout the play, she finds herself struggling with her roles as Emily's stepmother and Sam's widow. Additionally, a conflict between these two women ensues as they each try to play an overly active role in Emily's wedding.
Unfortunately for the audience, both characters lack originality and though Dillen attempts comedy, her efforts ultimately fall short. For example, Mary Jo is often seen carrying the ashes of Sam around in her purse, but her awkward, obsessive behavior evokes uneasiness from the audience rather than laughter.
At the same time, Jaskanvar, returning from a lengthy hiatus in New York, is overwhelmed by his return to India and his consequent encounter with his estranged parents. Furthermore, he must now deal with not one, but two mothers-in-law, who tire both him and the audience with their repetitive and annoying bickering.
The play is painfully long and is populated with an overabundance of unbecoming stereotypes about India and its people. As Becca and Mary Jo grapple with the culture shock that traveling abroad induces, they are forced to deal with a terrible Indian cab driver, green parrots, free-roaming elephants and, of course, the horrid smell of the impecunious streets of Delhi, which Jaskanvar defines as "the smell of poverty."
To set the scene, O'Gara repeatedly notes the green parrots inhabiting India, which are represented in the play by long sticks with a single green feather at each tip. The bare-bone props only serve to make the play feel low-budget — airplanes are represented by elevated black plastic objects while the poor people of India are represented by masked, inanimate structures.
Rather than mastering the art of fleshing out characters through dialogue, Dillen saturates the play with several unconvincing soliloquies that actually weaken the production. The audience is overtly informed about the characters' feelings through these soliloquies rather than through intuitive blocking, dialogue and inference. The result is a conglomeration of characters who are unable to communicate their feelings through natural discourse and must therefore be resigned to forwardly revealing their emotions through off-putting monologues.
As the performance comes to an end, Dillen scrambles to entertain an antsy audience a little longer by introducing a cursory side plot — Mary Jo finds an Indian man and decides to extend her stay a while longer. Nonetheless, this development seems hurried and unfinished as the play abruptly ends with Mary Jo resolving to remain in India.
The sole bright spot to an otherwise dreary play is the incorporation of authentic Indian music, which certainly adds a magical element to the production. Yet the hyperbolic and offensive stereotypes, the tacky props and the incongruous character asides make the finished product awkward and forgettable. Suffice to say that googling the word "India" is cheaper, informative and more entertaining than sitting through two hours of this gruesome play.
