This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The comedy of "Women in Jeopardy!," which opens next week at Pioneer Theatre Company, was sparked by a real-life kitchen conversation about a friend's awful boyfriend, says Ohio-based playwright Wendy MacLeod.
It's a contemporary story about the complications among Salt Lake City divorcees Liz (Elizabeth Meadows Rouse), Mary (Anne Tolpegin, last seen in PTC's "The Last Ship") and Jo (Rosalyn Coleman), all "women of a certain age." Mary and Jo take an immediate dislike to Liz's new boyfriend, Jackson (Joe Gately), a dentist with an offbeat sense of humor. When his dental hygienist goes missing and her murdered body is found, the friends quickly peg the boyfriend as a serial killer.
Since the play is set in Salt Lake City, it offers jokes local audiences might appreciate about possible conspiracies involving Utah's dominant culture and our incomprehensible-to-outsiders address convention.
One local homage embedded in the story is the address of the actors' housing, Meldrum House, in the University district on 1300 East. "They need to know that one for their Ubers," says director Karen Azenberg, adding that this cast in particular is taking advantage of exploring Salt Lake City as a way to understand their characters.
As the missing woman's investigation unfolds, a rumor surfaces that it might be some sort of Mormon conspiracy. Or perhaps, someone suggests, the woman was an escapee from a polygamous compound.
"What makes them think it's a Mormon thing?" one character asks.
"It's Salt Lake," comes the reply. "Everything's a Mormon thing."
"There aren't a lot of comedies written about women in Utah," Azenberg understates, adding she selected the comedy for subscribers who say they want to have fun at the theater. "It's easier to find things funnier when you really recognize yourself or your circumstances or your city in the story."
Utah theatergoers will remember MacLeod's "Find and Sign," which Pioneer produced in 2012, or the company's 2015 Play-by-Play workshop of "Slow Food." MacLeod, a playwright-in-residence at Ohio's Kenyon College, also lives in New Hampshire.
The city provided the backdrop as she based the story on a structure suggested by British theater critic Eric Bentley's famous quip: "If comedy begins in the kitchen and the bedroom, it can walk out under the stars."
The comedy features "women of a certain age" who also happen to be the protagonists driving the story, a welcome change from the usual pop-culture and cinematic depictions of female characters, often anchored in secondary roles as somebody's wife or mother.
In addition, it's a classic comedy built on rhythm. "People don't write comedies like this anymore," Azenberg says. "It has a series of lines that end in punchlines, and you have to keep driving to get to the punchline, or the punchline isn't as funny."
In rehearsals, the actors are working to ground their characters in reality, so that when the dialogue becomes, in Azenberg's description, "vaguely hysterical" in the tone of its high-pitched comedy, the story can take off.
"That's where the comedy is: Watching real people get completely out of hand," she says, while the onstage risk is letting the comedy go too far.
She hopes theatergoers will find it inherently funny to watch the housewives' hysteria feed on itself. "We can all recognize a moment in our lives when it happens to us, and it's just going to spiral," Azenberg says. "You see it, and you feel it, and when you're watching it happen to somebody else, it's funny. When it happens to ourselves, maybe not."
Rouse, who plays Liz, is returning to Pioneer Theatre more than 20 years after playing Billie Dawn in "Born Yesterday." "It's really fun to be my age," says the 53-year-old New York-based actor, "and playing the sexpot. A lot of time the business isn't interested in women being sexy after the age of 40."
She calls her character "excited." "There has been a renaissance of my nether parts!" Liz confides to her friends. It's a line that in rehearsal Azenberg has suggested shouldn't trip easily off Liz's tongue, "because this is all so new to her," Rouse says.
Rouse loves the modern farcical nature of the script, which is mostly a romp, but has a slightly serious theme about the intimacy of a circle of friends. "I value the fact that it's written that they love each other, no matter what," says Rouse, in contrast to reality TV depictions of backstabbing and cat-fighting housewives.
Coleman plays Jo, the friend who is described as "sardonic." The actor has an extensive list of stage and movie credits, and is also a coach for film directors who act in their own films. She made her Broadway debut in 1996 originating the role of Ruby in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars."
She appreciates the heightened comedy of the script, which, after all, starts out with talk of a dead body, but also how it casts a spotlight on female friendships. "Women can have super intimate relationships with their friends, through breakups and divorces, through our kids growing up, through ups and downs," Coleman says. "Although we experience that in life, we never ever see that on the stage."
facebook.com/ellen.weist —
'Women in Jeopardy!'
Wendy MacLeod's contemporary comedy, set in Salt Lake City and southern Utah, is about the drama that happens when a friend's new boyfriend is thought to be a bit off.
When • Feb. 10-25; 7 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday matinees
Where • Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 S. 1400 East, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $25-$44; $5 more on day of show; K-12 students half-price on Monday and Tuesday shows; at 801-581-6961, theater box office or pioneertheatre.org