CAPE MAY — “The times they are a-changin’” Bob Dylan wrote in 1963. The Civil Rights Movement quickly adopted the song as its rallying cry. Women’s rights advocates joined the chorus a few years later.
Cape May Stage kicks off its 36th season with “Vanities,” a three-act, three-woman play that follows the lives of three teenage girls from 1963 to 1974 as they “cheerlead” their way through high school, go Greek in college at an exclusive sorority and, ultimately, part company as life’s choices pull them apart as young adults.
Somehow, they never got the memo that the times were indeed “a-changin’” all around them.
Playwright Jack Heifner wrote the play in two days in 1974, loosely basing it on the lives of three female friends with whom he’d grown up. The play debuted the next year at Westside Theater off-Broadway, where it had a highly successful five-year run — one of the longest in off-Broadway history. He later turned the play into a musical.
Roy Steinberg, the theater’s longtime producing artistic director, finds parallels to today in the play.
“Looking at ‘Vanities’ through a 21st-century lens makes the play even more relevant in terms of relationships and navigating one’s way in an ever more complicated world,” he said.
Heifner envisioned the set for his play before he wrote a single word of dialogue. Since his lead characters were self-centered and vain, he reinforced those traits by placing three mirrored vanities on stage, where the actors apply makeup, change clothes and slip into their characters’ next incarnation. It’s a clever device and speaks volumes about how each one wants to present themselves to the world.
Three highly talented actors star in Heifner’s coming-of-age saga. Kyra Adams is Kathy, Meredith Beck is Mary and Elise Hudson is Joanne. Each starts her journey in lockstep with the others, but each ends up in very different places.
Regulars in the audience may remember Adams and Hudson from past performances at Cape May Stage. Adams began her professional acting career at the theater in 2018 when she played the pregnant daughter of an oyster boat captain in “The Shuck.” Other credits include roles on HBO’s “The Deuce” and Tubi’s “Gen Z Next Door.” Adams grew up in Cape May, attended Lower Cape May Regional High School and enrolled in summer theater camp at Cape May Stage as a child.
Hudson starred in Cape May Stage’s 2019 production of “The Taming” as Miss Georgia in a Miss America pageant. She also made a cameo appearance as George Washington in the play. Hudson had roles in Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Law and Order” and “SUV.”
Beck is a Philadelphia-based artist and concert singer who has performed at multiple venues, including the Bristol Riverside Theater, Bucks County Playhouse and Walnut Street Theater. She is making her Cape May debut in this production.
Hudson’s take on “Vanities” is that you can’t actually plan your life. “Life happens to us, life happens to friendships,” she said. “There’s really nothing we can do about it, no matter how hard we keep gripping the controls.”
Not surprisingly, Kathy, Mary and Joanne weren’t given a playbook for the new world that they would soon enter. While they started their journeys in lockstep in the past, they march off in different directions into the future. Unfortunately, there were no Cliff’s Notes to prepare them for the new world.
“Vanities” runs June 4-29 at Cape May Stage. It is a 90-minute show with no intermission and recommended for audiences over the age of 16. Call (609) 770-8311 or visit capemaystage.org for tickets or more information.
By LYNN MARTENSTEIN/For the Star and Wave
