Vanishing Point

Well, missed yesterday. Last day of my 12 days of non-stop franticness. Today I’m on the couch, in couch clothes, doing only couch things. Hooray. Finally a day off.

The play, Vanishing Point, was fabulous. Very tight, story clear, music lovely. I have high hopes for it to go places beyond Dignity Players in Annapolis. Should be off Broadway at the very least. The plot concerns three women born in the late nineteenth century – all famous. All three of them at some point in their lives, vanished. Two returned. One remains missing. The parallels among them are eerie. Agatha Christie, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Amelia Earhart. What would it have been like had they known one another, helped one another, held one another closely to the heart? It was, in the twenties and thirties, so difficult to be a succeeding woman. The culturally embedded dislike of women getting things done wasn’t even hidden at that time. There simply was no taking women seriously. Would they even have taken each other seriously? What would they have said? The play explores these questions and more. A wonderful production.

However when it gets to off Broadway, there must be a better costume mistress. The costumes in this production were sad. My companion knew they would be a problem when the program announced of the costumer that “Costuming is her thing.” Oh dear. The woman playing Agatha Christie was costumed fairly well, our guess was that she was wearing her own clothing. The clothing seemed dated – appropriate for the part – but fit her perfectly. The woman playing Aimee Semple McPherson was dressed in a shiny, glaringly white costume, a cross stitched in gold adorning the center of her front. If it’d been even off white it wouldn’t have been as awful. But the shininess and the ridiculous look really made her stand away from the other characters and not in a good way. It looked as if it’d been sewn just for her, just finished the afternoon the play opened. The woman playing Amelia Earhart wore a leather jacket, white scarf, flannel shirt. That all sounds right. But it was far from it. The jacket was some man’s – a blazer, not a flying jacket, about five sizes too big. She swam in it, the shoulders poking out too far from her body, the sleeves taped up to try and hide their enormous length. The scarf was not a flying scarf, but a regular knitted winter scarf. The fringe on the end was the only thing saving it from being totally inappropriate. The flannel shirt, not too visible beneath the enormous jacket was also enormous. Her khakis fit fine, thank goodness, and the shoes weren’t too bad, although the white socks were a mistake.

But, hey, the play was fantabulous enough to overcome the poor costumes. It was a high wire act for those three women and they accomplished the feat smoothly. All three were onstage for almost the entire two acts – not even a sip of water to moisten their singing throats. What a great job they did. Can’t wait to be going to the Broadway opening.