Five Women, a Southern-fried, estrogen-ized ensemble effort that crosses Steel Magnolias with Designing Women, came early in Ball's career, during his struggling-playwright phase in New York, and hints at the felicity of language and engagement of issues that would coalesce so bracingly as his work matured. Women is Ball's creative adolescence, rife with awkwardness, hesitancy and missteps—but also the electric undercurrent of something beautiful about to blossom.
Creating familiar "types," Ball gives us a quirky quintet of bridesmaids decked out in the same godawful gowns, designed to make the bride look spectacular by comparison. But we never meet the happy couple at these Knoxville nuptials. The wedding is occasionally gazed upon, post-vows, from the bedroom (Ron Lindblom's effectively pink-hued set) of the bride's kid sister, Meredith (Ayla Vain), where the rest of the gals gather to chatter about all manner of life—AIDS, eating disorders, sex, marriage, depression, plastic surgery, abortion and a hunk (unseen) named Tommy Valentine, the bride's ex-beau, whose charms have been expended on several of them.
Sassy, simmering Meredith first appears wearing a leather jacket over her froufrou frock, searching frantically for her pot stash and cracking wise over the wedding party ("the bland leading the bland"). Enter Frances (Penni Mendez), virginal and moral ("I do not take drugs. I am a Christian"); Georgeanne (Ela Rose), tipsy, furious at her milquetoast husband and horny for Tommy, with whom she once shared an interlude by a Dumpster ("I will never be able to smell garbage again without thinking of Tommy"); good-humored Mindy (Katrina Larsen), the groom's lesbian sister, bemused by her wedding getup ("I look like a ho from The Twilight Zone") and providing a counterpoint to Frances (who blurts out, "she looks like a real woman!"); and Trisha (Lara Lanae Freeborn), the sardonic party girl with a purse full of condoms and fierce determination not to let any man leave her vulnerable again (she completes "always a bridesmaid" with "never a schmuck").
They all maintain a general disdain for the bride and wariness about men. They get stoned (except for Frances), bond and lend support when one reveals a long-hidden secret involving horn-dog Tommy. Ball evinces an ear for female gossip and a feel for their sensibilities—and a knack for crisp one-liners—but Women wanders and rambles, a vacuum where its dramatic core should be, with little narrative momentum. And a late scene in which cynical Trisha connects with a relationship-minded usher (Danny Beason), introduced out of left field, is an awkward tack-on. Walter Niejadlik's direction puts an exclamation point on most of the action, as if trying to pack some oomph into an oomph-less play. Women may go nowhere, but this cast makes it fun to get there. Vain's performance as Meredith is no doubt polarizing. Some will find her unbearably brash, but she's a crackling energy rush on stage, providing this piece a needed pulse. Larsen's a breezy delight as Mindy. As written, prim Frances doesn't leave an actress much leeway, but Mendez mines sweetness from a character that could have been grating, and Rose's Georgeanne, while sometimes whiny, is a funny mix of liquored-up longing, regret and bursts of pique. The cream of this crop is Freeborn, whose Trisha is a marvel of multiple shades. Amusingly arch, but in a playful way that never lapses into outright bitterness, she's an elegant presence that looms over these proceedings, at once wise and broken, but with a wisp of hope that wafts around her like a faint perfume. Where other actresses might play those qualities sequentially, Freeborn blends them beautifully into a consistently complex whole.
On the page, these women are little more than a collection of characteristics casually munching on a plate of contemporary topics. But at this production, the playwright owes a debt to a cast that gives Alan's Women some balls.