Though often done, author Backhaus makes the lampooning fun to watch. After much liquor consumption, the three take turns cleverly parodying the Hemingway style. It’s the imagined aftermath of Ernest Hemingway’s 1961 funeral, attended by his three living spouses - his first wife, Hadley Richardson (Jasmine Sharma), the journalist Martha Gellhorn (Anisha Jagannathan), and his widow, Mary Welsh (Rebecca Schweitzer). The contemporary salty language nicely juxtaposes the period costumes, as the two women make peace after Henri’s death.
At the same time, their Henri (Kunal Prasad) dies while physically jousting. We watch Henri’s rejected queen, Catherine de’ Medici (Jasmine Sharma), and Henri’s beloved mistress, Diane de Poitiers (Anisha Jagannathan), verbally joust with each other. Rebecca Schweitzer introduces the first scene as a cook to Henri II of France with a funny imitation of a 16th-century version of Julia Child. Directed by Lavina Jadhwani, Wives is not without creative ideas and humor it simply fails to coalesce and deliver significant meaning and message. In combining the four skits into one comedic show, playwright Jaclyn Backhaus has given us only caricatures of these diverse women, which are mostly jumbled send-ups. Wives, Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., through July 24 Wives, a contemporary production consisting of four separate vignettes about women through the ages, is an example of when more is less. Anisha Jagannathan and Rebecca Schweitzer in Jaclyn Backhaus’s Wives.
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