Working from a smart, snappy script by Chiara Atik, a nine-person ensemble cast turns Women into a comic romp that is packing ‘em in at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival.
The object of Atik’s pungent satire is Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” a goody-goody classic about female bonding. With director Stephanie Ward providing the pace and timing, the ensemble offer a 21st-century take on the ur-Victorian novel. The officious Jo (Layla Khosnoudi), for example, is now a pants-wearing lesbian, and Meg (the hilarious Abby Rosebrock) is now a motor-mouthed blonde ditz who ends up with two babies in her arms, hardly knowing how they got there.
Just about every aspect of “Little Women” comes in for a ribbing: manners, family dynamics, notions of sex and love, the hallowed state of sisterhood.
Atik’s satirical assault is bold and swift: she lampoons everyone’s behavior in merciless, unrelenting fashion (and that goes for the girls’ mother as well). As for the males who enter Alcott’s female province (Zac Moon, Bradley Anderson, Stephen Stout and Brett Epstein), they are so hapless and nerdy that they make Woody Allen look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
