Five Women Wearing the Same Dress by Alan Ball (1993)

TW: Abortion Mention, Child Molestation Mention, Marijuana Smoking, Cocaine, Homophobic Slurs

 

SYNOPSIS:

                None of Tracy’s bridesmaids want much to do with the wedding and now that they’re in the reception phase the women have retreated upstairs to Meredith’s (Tracy’s younger sister’s) room. Frances, the religious cousin, is the only one of the bridesmaids that idolizes Tracy. Meredith grew up in Tracy’s shadow and her admiration soured into rebellion. Trisha was close with Tracy when they were kids and Trisha was a bad influence, but grew distant after graduation. In fact, in college Georgeanne had a breakdown caused by the stress of going through an abortion by herself because the would-be father was Tracy’s current boyfriend and taking her to a frat party that day. The last of the bridesmaid’s is Mindy, the groom’s older sister, who also happens to be an out and proud lesbian. Act I ends with the girls realizing that none of them are actually friends with Tracy, let a lone close. In Act II the girls get closer with each other and share more about their regrets in life while also calling each other out on their hypocrisy. Frances arranges a date with a bartender and even has a taste of champagne which she believes is sinful despite being 21. The drama of Meredith refusing to acknowledge that she was molested as a child, Mindy’s angst about her lesbianism being weaponized against her, and Trisha’s avoidance of any kind of commitment are acknowledged, but not unpacked. The play ends with Tripp taking a photo of the five bridesmaids taking a moment to be their authentic selves.

 

CHARACTERS:

Frances – 21, Implied to be White, Sweet Faced

Meredith – 22, White, Athletic, Freckled Shoulders

Trisha – Early 30s, Strikingly Glamorous

Georgeanne – Early 30s

Mindy – Mid-Late 30s, White, Attractive, Slender

Tripp – Late 20s, Charming, Not Overly Handsome, Definitely Sexy

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES:

                The first true monologue belongs to Georgeanne where she explains why seeing Tommy Valentine is so triggering to her and could easily be combined with two subsequent lines to make a 2-minute monologue or so. The original text contains profanity, but the monologue works with or without it.

                Mindy has lines about not wanting to ruin another on of her brother’s big moments, but the monologue doesn’t hold up outside of context since the funny thing about it is that she’s talking about trivial nonsense while the other girls were talking about whether or not Georgeanne should get divorced. She’s got a better one in the second act about beauty pageants and how contestants are the same as drag queens, but it’s stretched over a few lines. She’s got another one about the high crime of the beauty industry that works well between two lines and one stolen from Georgeanne. Mindy’s last monologue is self righteous fury at how she’s been treated throughout the wedding process, but ends with her afraid she’s going to throw up. It’s doable though.

                Frances has her own monologue when Tracy is considering in vitro
, but it’s very fire and brimstone despite her never actually saying that the other characters are going to hell. Think Fox News. After the monologue Tracy essentially calls Frances a hypocrite for demanding her religion be respected while not respecting that the others aren’t religious and Frances nearly starts crying when she’s told that they either needed to agree to see each other as equals or Frances could leave.

                 The only thing like a monologue for Meredith is her recounting her crush on Tommy Valentine and how he came into her room when she was twelve or thirteen. Personally I can’t think of an audition that would call for this particular type of material since most of them dealing with this subject matter would provide their own excerpts.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS:

                This play is pro LGBT+, but it’s dated. The homophobic slurs mentioned seem to be used less like slurs and more like the characters not knowing better words to use. “Dyke” is still being debated in 2021 whether it’s a slur or has been reclaimed as well as “queer” which in this case is being used as a form of being, not a descriptor. “F*g” to my knowledge is about as accepted in the queer community as the N word is among Black people, meaning it changes from person to person in the community but is generally seen as an insult when used by anyone outside of it. Still, those are how I perceive those words in 2021 as a member of those communities, and I’m not as well versed in queer history to definitively say how these words would have been perceived in 1993.

                I say all that to say that I read this play waiting for Meredith to come out of the closet, which she doesn’t but there’s a moment when she’s talking about her childhood trauma and she snaps at Mindy when she offers to get Meredith in contact with some of her friends. Mindy is talking about therapists, but it feels like Meredith is implying she doesn’t need help from the queer community and just after that Mindy launches into her rant about predatory lesbians. Regardless, I very much still enjoyed the play and would be interested in what it would look like if Alan Ball ever decided to modernize it. I’m just a big fan of comedies that deal with dramatic material.