Saving Kitty (2M, 2W)
Productions:
Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater – Wellfleet, MA – July 15-July 28, 2012; New Jersey Repertory Company – Long Branch, NJ – July 25- August 25, 2013; Central Square Theater – Cambridge, MA – July 9-August 2, 2015
Synopsis:
The battle lines are drawn and it’s all-out war when beautiful, fifty-something Kate Hartley, a wealthy, liberal, Manhattan atheist, launches a diabolical campaign to break up the engagement of her daughter Kitty to hunky Evangelical Christian Paul. Kate, divinely dizzy, supremely charming and highly intelligent, uses all her wiles to scuttle the relationship, alternating between saboteur and seductress.
Praise
The Nora Theater Production at Central Square Theater is so beautifully directed, acted and presented that you could mistake the play for Noel Coward.
- The Boston Globe, July 2015
Funniest show in town.
- Joyce's Choices, July 2015
Saving Kitty is deliciously uncensored…wickedly funny.
- Broadway World, August 2015
Hilarious, must see play. Saving Kitty is extraordinary funny. Ultimately, Saving Kitty becomes more than a social commentary: it explores both cross-cultural prejudices and intimate emotional lives. Give yourself the gift of laughter and go.
- Spare Change News, August 2015
Marisa Smith’s play is consistently funny and outrageous.
- Talkin' Broadway
Saving Kitty is God of War meets Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
- The New England Theatre Geek, July 2015
Meeting the Disapproving Mother
By Michael Sommers, The New York Times
RUTHLESS MOTHERS of all degrees have long been a forceful presence in dramatic literature. Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, Tennessee Williams’s Amanda Wingfield and Gypsy Rose Lee’s mama are among the maternal monsters who command the stage. Not in their league, but formidable in her own daffy way, is Kate Hartley, a well-off Manhattan matron who disapproves of her daughter’s boyfriend in “Saving Kitty,” a two-act comedy by Marisa Smith that is currently staged by the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. The company’s previous show, “Happy,” similarly involved an awkward dinner party, but “Saving Kitty” proves to be a lighter and brighter occasion. Sipping a fine wine with her husband, Huntley, in their Fifth Avenue apartment, Kate waits for their daughter, Kitty, an up-and-coming television journalist, to arrive with her latest beau for an overnight visit. Jokes are made alluding to “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” as the couple speculates on the stranger they are about to entertain; in the process, Kate and Huntley are depicted as urbane, cultured people of a liberal bent. Then Kitty’s handsome, ingratiating fiancé-to-be, Paul, turns out to be an evangelical Christian educator.
Invoking Jim Jones, Kate takes an immediate dislike to Paul. “He’s going to get her involved in that kooky religion and keep her barefoot and pregnant for the rest of her life!” Kate hisses to Hartley. “I know the type, all nice and sweet on the outside but inside he’s just a barbarian, he wants to own her.”
Kate relentlessly persists in challenging Paul’s values even as she ceaselessly plies him with liquor and desserts. To his credit, the amiable Paul remains tolerant of Kate’s catty swipes at his faith (“I do hope you like lamb, Paul. If not, I have loaves and fishes in the freezer”). At the same time, Kitty knows that Kate is a dissatisfied woman living vicariously through her daughter’s career. Later there is an odd encounter in the wee hours between Paul, clad in gym shorts, and Kate, fluttering about in a revealing peignoir, as they uneasily chat and chew on butterscotch brownies. By the next day, the young couple’s hitherto chaste relationship has both flowered and abruptly wilted. A crisis in the Hartley marriage leads to a resolution in favor of a promising future for Kitty and Paul and a greater sense of self-awareness for Kate. A romantic comedy that is shanghaied by Kate’s domineering presence, the play does not really delve into religious questions but instead studies blind intolerance in an otherwise engaging if maddening individual. Kate is an affected, highhanded, erudite woman who reveals a surprising streak of ignorance as she blithely slanders Arabs, Turks, Germans and even her loved ones, as well as religious folk. She could be a nasty character, but the playwright humorously spins her out as a fluffy ball of amusing contradictions.
The production’s director, Evan Bergman, and his leading lady, Judith Hawking, paint Kate in a comical light. Chattering in a gurgling, multi-inflected fashion, Ms. Hawking gives Kate a flamboyant manner that softens her outrageous remarks and actions. (During last Sunday’s matinee, a dubious bit involving a blue burqa reduced the audience to howls of laughter.) Her chignon unraveling with her self-dramatizing behavior, Ms. Hawking’s Kate is ultimately an elegant clown whom viewers need not take seriously. Patricia E. Doherty, the costume designer, dresses Ms. Hawking and the other actors with excellent detail. Sarah Nealis’s good-humored Kitty patiently copes with her mother’s meddling ways. Christian Pedersen’s levelheaded Paul is a pleasure to know, and his briefly sexy moments with Kitty appear genuine. John FitzGibbon suavely portrays Huntley, a harried United Nations official who fondly lends a deaf ear to his wife’s excesses. Jessica Parks, the set designer, provides a genteel room in gold, cream and pink for this comedy about a whimsical mother whose caprices are less than fabulous.