Early on, the stage manager-turned-narrator of Vanity Fair warns audiences at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh venue that “There are no morals here.” It’s a promise masked as a warning. He knows what a ravenous audience craves: scandals, double-crossings, and fat slabs of theatrical red meat. If only a coherent plot and fully fleshed-out characters were also on the menu.
William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, the 19th century novel that satirizes British high society, uses a famously unreliable narrator who peddles gossip and hearsay. In Kate Hamill’s arch adaptation for the stage, the narrator is replaced by a stage manager (the impish Dan Hiatt) who guides us, with great fanfare, through the proceedings.
Hamill’s Vanity Fair is presented as a meta-narrative. The show knowingly comments on the work it’s adapting, a bildungsroman set during the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. It’s the tale of two women, best friends of opposite upbringings, high and low, who trade places over the years. The dual trajectories of the poor, but shrewd, Becky Sharp (the fabulous Rebekah Brockman) and the rich, but meek, Amelia Sedley (the humble Maribel Martinez) intersect too briefly. But on their own, they traverse the patriarchy using their wiles, the only tools at their disposal, and switch social positions, back and forth, throughout the story.
As a stage production, Vanity Fair is delivered in the style of a Victorian burlesque, which combines winking melodrama with English music hall. (Remember the oompah joy of the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty Four”? That’s music hall.) The result isn’t the layered and complex product Hamill is going for. It’s instead too fussy and, at the same time, half-baked.
What a missed opportunity. Becky and Amelia are visions of the modern woman. Their men, non-entities mostly, come and go. One is the heir to a great fortune (Alyssa Wilmoth Keegan, an English Bonaparte in drag). Another is a swindler (Adam Magill, spindly and cunning). The best of the bunch is a lovelorn soldier (Anthony Michael Lopez, unabashedly sweet). None are interesting enough to call out by name.
Vanity Fair is ultimately Becky’s tale. She’s a troublemaker, the true protagonist of Thackeray’s 1848 novel. The play in question would’ve been better served had it followed her example, by being fiery and unapologetic. It’s instead a hurried and disjointed summary of a sprawling tome.
Vanity Fair runs at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre. Tickets $44$125. Runtime 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission.
