Ruth Draper’s Monologues

Reviewed by Mayank Keshaviah

Living through the transition in our literary and theatrical history from ornate oratory and prose to common-speak, Ruth Draper (1884-1956), the scion of socialites, transferred her life experiences to the stage. Specifically, with her talent for mimicry and character, she preserved the people she came across in the theatrical amber of monologue, which became her trademark medium. In true modernist fashion, Draper performed on largely bare sets with only the occasional prop.

From the early 1920s through the early 1950s, Draper was quite the draw, garnering such fans as Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw. “That’s not acting. That’s life,” Shaw once said of Draper’s work. Shaw’s observation is accurate in that the humor and attraction of Draper’s monologues primarily stems from character: a range of high-society women (the instructress of poise, the debutante, the lady who lunches, and the matron of the manor) played by the talented and versatile Annette Bening (who also directs).

In the first of the four vignettes, “A Class in Greek Poise,” Bening sports a flowing dress that calls to mind the drapery of ancient sculpture, prancing about the stage while instructing heavy-set society women on the finer points of poise. There’s gentle pretension in her manner as she tries to motivate her wards with pearls such as “Nature has so many messages for us, if we would but hearken.” Quickly repairing to an upstage “dressing room,” Bening slips into a ‘20s flapper-style outfit for “A Débutante at a Dance,” in which she physically and vocally transforms into a wide-eyed teen who spouts such earnest insight as, “When you come right down to it, life is serious. It’s terribly serious.”

In the latter two pieces, arguably two of Draper’s most famous, as well as those with the most modern resonance, Bening takes on the mantle of society matron. In doing so, she must have felt the temptation to move into a caricature of the potentially unsympathetic characters, but Bening remains compassionate in her portrayals, while occasionally winking good-naturedly at the puffed-up privilege of the women she inhabits. In “Doctors and Diets,” penned in 1925, a Mrs. Grimmer and her friends lunch at a very chic restaurant but end up ordering only boiled turnips, lemon juice and raw carrots . . . except for Grimmer herself, who announces that she’s now on the three-éclair-a-day diet.

In “The Italian Lesson,” which closes out the intermission-less evening, a teacher offers a study of Dante, in Italian, to a high society matron, who keeps answering an endlessly ringing telephone throughout the ill-fated lesson. Once again the satirical touch is light, and sympathy remains for characters, with the matron’s stunning memory for all the comings and goings of the servants and offspring in her household.

The evening is more a showcase of Bening’s acting range and sonorous alto, which elucidates Draper’s language, than a truly theatrical event. At the same time, dressed in Catherine Zuber’s elegant and flowing pastels of a bygone era, Bening takes us back to a time and its inhabitants that in many ways are not so different from our own.

The Gil Cates Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; thru May 18. (310) 208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com