Little Women? — WRITE. THINK. DREAM.

By the time I got tickets to Dallas Theater Center's Little Women, opening night, February 7th, was sold out. My Saturday night, second-choice performance still played to a packed house at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. The show was another in a long list of standout productions by the renowned Dallas company, and it plays at an auspicious moment in the life of this beloved literary classic written by Louisa May Alcott. Hollywood is abuzz with conversations about Greta Gerwig's adaptation, overshadowing the more relevant and only slightly less recent conversations about this 2019 script by Kate Hamill. Audiences familiar with the movie, and especially with the book, may expect a particular set of things from this production. Hamill's narrative disrupts expectations, while still honoring the important beats of this well-loved story.

This script premiered off-Broadway to great acclaim last year at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Hamill's story pays homage to the period and the classic text, while bending and sometimes breaking the roadmaps laid out by the original. Central to this retelling are questions about the core gender identity of Jo March; less central, and even overlooked, are questions about Jo's core identity as a writer. Instead, Hamill ponders what readers and critics have questioned for a century and a half: to what extent is Jo March truly able to inhabit the role of a woman in 1868?

Literary critics have written troves of papers on Little Women through the lens of gender and queer studies, and Hamill's script translates these already-rehearsed concepts for the stage. Here we see a swashbuckling Jo March, who not only resists pressure to perform in female roles, in many ways she resists the label of female entirely. This play, mostly successfully, combines a period-grounded setting with an of-the-moment set of questions. An "authorial intent" fallacy is often picked up to defend and advance both this play and Gerwig's new movie, but surely it matters not one bit what Louisa May Alcott would have wanted. Whatever her wishes, this play speaks to a modern audience hungry for stories just like this one.

Aside from the centrality of the gender identity plot, viewers will encounter a pared-down narrative, necessary for the stage. This one, unlike most other productions, centers itself around Jo and Beth. Pearl Rhein portrays the discomfited Jo March with great strength and is engaging and heartbreaking in turn. Maggie Thompson's Beth was comical at various points, bringing a welcome new element to the typically stoic and serious character. Any actress in this role needs to hit many nonverbal cues with grace and careful precision. Thompson accomplished this with ease.

Lilli Hokama gave a convincingly young performance of Amy and aged the character well as the show wore on. Her petulance and later her cool anger struck the right tones as Hamill's narrative shifted the classic elements of the character. Meg (Jennie Greenberry) and Marmie (Liz Mikel) stood as strong, recognizable, and modernized, maternal figures throughout, each giving lovely performances. Hamill's script called for a more feminine version of Laurie, and Louis Reyes McWilliams gracefully presented Jo's playful and earnest opposite in this production. Alex Organ (John Brooks), Sally Nystuen Vahle (Hannah, Mrs. Mingott, and Aunt March), and Mike Sears (Mr. Laurence and Mr. Dashwood) were each strong supporting presences in this cast, and Andrew Crowe's (Robert March) appearance at multiple moments with the violin was a lovely thing to behold.

Dallas Theater Center's production is as high quality as might be expected from any off-Broadway show. Excellent costumes by Moria Sine Clinton and set by Wilson Chin made it easy to sink into the story as an audience member. Brilliant lighting work by Marcus Dilliard accented, punctuated, and softened the story as needed. A special nod is due to whoever created the graphic art for this production, which brilliantly cues the central themes of the play to any observant reader of the program.

This play was disrupted by its extratextual elements only in one instance: Aunt March's animatronic, and extremely distracting, parrot. Perhaps this was a choice to match the Cherry Lane production of this play in 2019? If so, it bears noting that it is not necessary to replicate other theaters' successful productions to produce an excellent play. But the moment was over in an instant, and the play immediately returned to the seamless quality it maintained otherwise.

Though it was wonderfully prepared and performed by all involved, as a story, this show felt precarious to me. This play ends the action early, before Jo's trip to New York, but still charges her with the necessity of telling her family's story, only this time by herself. I left the production somewhat disappointed by the narrative, feeling that the sense of community central to the original was inappropriately cast-off in favor of a highly-individualistic sensibility. It seems to me that there are better frame stories than Little Women available to advance Kate Hamill's set of questions.

Regardless, this was a wonderful play crafted by a set of wonderfully talented people. Don't miss this run of Little Women that ends on March 1, 2020. You can find tickets here.