Women Writers of the Provincetown Players: A Collection of Short Works (review)

When one thinks of the Provincetown Players, what comes to mind are notable figures like Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook, Louise Bryant, and, of course, Eugene O'Neill. However, Judith Barlow showcases in her rich collection an impressive list of lesser-known women playwrights, some of whom also directed and acted in their plays. We learn that these women were talented and prolific and contributed to the success of the Players in both Provincetown and New York City. Their plays were striking in their diversity and unconventional subject matter.

Among the thirteen writers covered by Barlow in this volume are some well known as poets and novelists, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Edna Ferber. However, it is the less familiar authors who wrote the more intriguing plays; for example, Neith Boyce, Rita Wellman, Rita Creighton Smith, Alice Rostetter, Bosworth Crocker, and Mary Foster Barber. Boyce's play A Winter's Night (1916) centers on two brothers in love with the same woman; Rachel, the protagonist, was married to Daniel, and Jacob lived with them. After Daniel's death, Rachel rejects Jacob's offer of marriage and leaves her home for New York where she hopes to open a fabric shop. As Barlow points out, Jacob turns out to be a homebody, as Daniel had been, while Rachel behaves like an authentic "New Woman" and rejects the confines of domestic life, saying: "I'm in prison here, I have been for years" (43). As Barlow reminds us, this play is reminiscent not only of Glaspell's Trifles but also O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon.

Another play that anticipates themes in an O'Neill play, in this case Strange Interlude, is Rita Creighton Smith's The Rescue (1918). The protagonist, Anna, is plagued by the knowledge that her family tree is infected by insanity. Her cousin Kate, with what Barlow calls "a wholesome lie" (156), convinces Anna that she is not related to the insane side of their family and thus frees her to take a job and pursue a new, independent life in New York City rather than staying behind to care for her aged aunt. Rita McCann Wellman's The Rib Person (1918) looks toward modernism and theater of the absurd. The women in that play reject their conventional roles as wives and mothers to live as mistresses to their lovers rather than wives, and are even willing to travel to distant lands without plans or money.

Barlow notes that many of the plays reflect the postwar attitude of vague direction and ambiguous endings, for example, Mary Barber's The Squealers (1919). In the play, Margaret's husband, Jim, has been arrested for killing his mining boss and then let go because he "squeals" on his fellow Molly Maguires. Torn between love of her husband and distaste for his betrayal, she threatens not to run off with him because he is a squealer. But we never learn what her decision is. This was a significant point of criticism by New York Times critic James Corbin, according to Barlow's research. In contrast to Jim's betrayal of his mates, Glaspell's Women's Honor (1918) is a satirical feminist work in which the female witnesses in a murder trial protect the woman involved romantically with the accused murderer by inventing various scenarios to save her reputation. Although The Baby Carriage by Bosworth Crocker (1919) is on the surface simplistic in its plot, it moves beyond the one-dimensional focus of a poor Jewish expectant mother of four, who cannot afford the carriage her friend is selling, to a poignant play about prejudice, class, and courage.

Surely the most unusual and modern play is The Widow's Veil, staged during the Provincetown's third season in 1919. Its author, Alice Rostetter, an actor as well as playwright, had a penchant for children's plays and satirical comedies...