The Best of Everything is based on the more-than-50-year-old book by Rona Jaffe, adapted and directed by Julie Kramer and developed with Amy Wilson, who is very effective in a tightly-wound role in the show as the highest woman in the office. The play is an engaging throwback to an era, 1952, shortly after World War II, which had very different moral and social views and values from today. I, as an artist/bohemian at the time, was an outsider, but as an observer – the piece rings true.
The central theme is women working in an office with the ultimate goal of marrying and having a family. Our protagonist, played with a lyric grace by the beautiful Sarah Wilson, starts at the bottom, befriends fellow workers Sas Goldberg, Molly Lloyd, Alicia Sable and Hayley Treider, all fine actresses with unique characters, and who, in the course of the action, interact with Tom O’Keefe (in several roles) and Jordan Geiger.
Ms. Kramer’s direction gives us a kind of theatrically delicious look at these women and their time. Somehow she is able to sprinkle musical numbers into the mix with great flair, which is needed late in the play as the frustrations and disappointments of the women become a tad repetitious.
With Lauren Helpern’s flexible set, Graham Kindred’s fine lighting, on-the-nose period costumes by Daniel Urlie, and the impeccable timing and creativity of director Kramer, this show is a great, entertaining carrying out of Jaffe’s concepts about women in that time, exceptionally well-played by the talented cast.
