Vanities—The Musical is a heartfelt and humorous chronicle of the lives of three women, Joanne, Kathy, and Mary, tracing them from their late teen years through adulthood. They grow and change, testing the limits of what they thought they knew about themselves, as well as the narrow views of women society has presented them.
With Pomerantz and his winning company on board, Vanities-The Musical nonetheless remains not only diverting but endearing, right up to the feel-good conclusion that Heifner and Kirshenbaum have provided. Heifner’s play was never a searing piece of social commentary to begin with, and by continuing to brighten both the presentation and the resolution of this spinoff, he’s giving his nearly 50-year-old baby room to grow.
Well, musical lovers, here’s the tuner again, now as Vanities–The Musical. It’s surely pleasant enough but not so much a revival as, according to advance word, a revisal. Again, as in 2009, it extends the years – originally 1963-74 – that a trio of small-town Texas vanity owners, Kathy, Mary, and Joanne, promise eternal friendship only to strain that promise and in 1990 acknowledge the error of their ways. (Writing in 1976, Heifner understandably had a grasp on 1974 but hadn’t bothered to imagine the future.)
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