Elaborate Victorian language and modern slang. Semi-circular backdrop of 20th century abstract frolicking nudes (on -- could it be -- burlap?) cut out between one nude's legs as an entrance to a boudoir with old fashioned chaise. Contemporary glitzy black pants suit for Anna and sequin-topped pink evening gown on Claire, waited on by maid Catherine, with a lace-curtain apron over black swaddling cloths. Everything's mixed up with a parcel of artsy, once-innovative techniques that now simply make a mess.
Not that Norah Sweeney, despite her youth, isn't quick-tongued and imposing as Anna, who has submitted to a sugar daddy to keep her and lover Claire (way too cute Lesslie Crane) in style. But Claire has the hots for a much younger gal and wants to use Anna's home and even the old lover herself to aid in a seduction. This gives Anna one more of seemingly endless topics to opine upon in grandiose terms and tones. She directs her main sarcasm, however, toward a new serving girl, ostensibly stoic Scottish Catherine. Believing her to be Irish, Anna constantly berates Catherine as if she's voiced a score of grievances common to immigrants from the old, diseased sod.
Catherine has her own unconventional sexual desires, it is revealed, though not easily. That's because Mariam Habib, who looks as Scottish as Turhan Bey, speaks with an almost totally incomprehensible accent. She does, however, move and freeze well, in turn. She's also adept at moving furniture, as if dancing - once with stage hands and hoisting a chandelier over a table on which one of them inexplicably tosses silver dust. At least it's a relief from the blah, blah, blah.
The Boston Marriage I attended and liked in London a few years ago seems totally divorced from this wrong Florida rite.
