SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF SUBURBIA

THE SMELL OF THE KILL
Directed by Roseann Sheridan; written by Michele Lowe
With: Marianne Ryan, Meagan Hawkes, Mary Proctor, Mike Abernethy, Chris Newcomb, and Rich Kimball
At Penobscot Theatre in Bangor, Maine
From February 2 to February 13, 2005

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

Ah, housewives! Through the decades, say, from the 1950s on, they have garnered quite a reputation, sometimes funny, sometimes not so funny. I Love Lucy, The Donna Reed Show, Diary of a Mad Housewife, The Stepford Wives, and the current Desperate Housewives are just some of the examples of our society’s attempts, often unsuccessful, to come to terms with the role of the housewife. Is she a victim, a saint, a sap, or a sinner? My guess is that nobody is really sure, and, as result, we often get uneven stories where the women seldom rise above being stereotypes.

The Smell of the Kill falls squarely in the tradition of the uneven story with stereotypical housewives. Although Penobscot Theatre did a fine job with this nasty little brew of a play, which at times made me laugh, I was also uncomfortable in an odd sort of way, especially given my feminist leanings. In short, the play is about three women who decide to kill their husbands by letting them freeze to death when the men get trapped in a meat locker that belongs to one of the husbands. Yes, there were some zingy, sarcastic lines, but through it all I couldn’t help but think, “What if the genders were reversed, and it was the men who were plotting to kill their irritating wives?” Would we be laughing so hard? Would we be laughing at all? Would such a play even be produced? I doubt it. But since women are so often the victims, it is perfectly acceptable, funny even, for a play to feature them as conniving murderers. Or is it? More on this latter.

The play takes place in Nicky’s kitchen. She has just had two couples over for dinner, and the women, Molly and Debra, are in the kitchen helping her clean up. The men are somewhere beyond the kitchen, in the dining room or the living room, and all we hear are their voices as they bellow orders and make demands. Marty, Debra’s husband, calls for cigars; Jay, Nicky’s husband, clamors for dessert; and Danny, Molly’s husband, keeps calling out that he loves her, which at first seems touching until we discover that they’ve been married for about twelve years.

As the women bustle about the kitchen, they reveal their own personalities. Nicky is sharp and bitter and clearly can’t stand her husband. Debra, on the other hand, is an adoring Stepford wife who believes it’s her duty to cater to her husband. Then there’s Molly, the wifty one, who drinks too much and yearns for children. At first, Debra and Nicky spin around Molly like electrons around a nucleus, and when either Debra or Nicky is alone with Molly, they indulge in some vicious gossip about the other woman. Thus we learn that Debra’s husband has made a pass at Nicky and has done so with other women, and Nicky’s husband has embezzled a lot of money and will probably be going to jail.

More tidbits are revealed. Jay wants Nicky to quit her job as a book editor so that they can use money from her profit sharing to pay the lawyers’ bills. Debra thinks it is Nicky’s duty to do this very thing and “stand by her man,” even though Nicky has been lending Debra money to help pay for her son’s education. Molly has her own troubles. Once she was pregnant, but her husband, who professes to love her so much, didn’t want a child to intrude on their happiness, and Molly implies that Danny insisted on an abortion. Furthermore, he keeps such close tabs on Molly that it’s a miracle that she finds time to have the many affairs to which she eventually confesses. Housewives are nothing if not inventive.

And so it goes until we come to the meat locker, Jay’s response to the threats, legal and financial, to his family. (Nicky’s response, on the other hand, is to stock up on frozen peas.) Jay has bought a huge one, installed it in their basement, and has stocked it with all sorts of goodies he’s killed. In fact, the dinner Nicky served was made from deer meat Jay hunted.

As the women contemplate the meat locker and the various aspects of their unhappy lives, they lose their clothes in a variety of ways and are stripped to their essence, where they bare not only their bodies but also their souls. When all becomes quiet from beyond the kitchen, and a furious banging ensues from below, the women correctly assume that the men have accidentally locked themselves in the meat locker.

Nicky immediately views this as a chance to get rid of a man who has mired her with scandal and will probably drag them both into debt. Molly might be wifty, but she knows opportunity when she sees it. Oddly enough, it is Debra who, at least for awhile, is the moral center of the play. Even though she has pretended otherwise, Debra knows Marty is a chump who plans to leave her for another woman. She asks, “''People make mistakes, but do you murder them? Marty’s awful, but should I kill him?”

Well, of course not, and it is here that the audience is put in a quandary. Should they side with the “desperate housewives” against their loutish husbands, or hope that the housewives come to their senses and let the men out before they freeze to death? This reviewer could not bring herself to side with the housewives who, after all, have options. They are all upper middle class, with either talent or money (even Debra, who was a crackerjack Realtor before her husband forced her to quit her job). Yes, the husbands are “awful” but not so awful that they deserve to die, and because of this, the women’s decision feels like a form of moral cowardice rather than a moment of triumph.

Nonetheless, Marianne Ryan, Meagan Hawkes, and Mary Proctor did an excellent job of playing Debra, Molly, and Nicky, respectively. The acting of all three was so tight and sharp that as the play spun to its nasty conclusion, there wasn’t a bit of slack time. It was a first-rate production, even if the play itself didn’t rise to that level.

In doing research for The Smell of the Kill, I came upon many reviews, and opinion was decidedly mixed. Some reviewers thought it was a delicious, biting example of black comedy; others felt that it was an offensive mix of stereotypes and gross-out humor. In fact, I think all these assessments are true. Nevertheless, the play’s ninety minutes went by pretty fast.

 

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