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"The big challenge in adapting 'The Woman' [written in 1911] is making it accessible to a contemporary audience without losing the spirit of the original work," notes adaptor-director David Zarko during a phone interview. "I have to emphasize the themes that have not changed in 90 years without injecting too many of my own interpretations."

Written by William C. DeMille (Cecil B.'s brother and Agnes' father), "The Woman" is an old-fashioned political potboiler, awash in sexual intrigue, schemes, and blackmail. The play also examines the age-old debate: idealism vs. pragmatism, and at what cost each? In the name of idealism is anything accomplished? And conversely, is pragmatism a gussied up form of sell-out?

"The Woman," a hit on Broadway in its time and the inspiration for two films, is now seeing its first revival in 90 years, Off-Broadway at the Metropolitan Playhouse, a nine-year-old theatre dedicated to reviving lesser-known American plays written between the Civil War and World War I.

The play, which opened June 14, looks at what happens when Jim Blake, a calculating congressman, attempts to blackmail Congressman Matthew Standish, the "moral" opposition, into voting for a nasty piece of legislation. The source of the blackmail: a sexual indiscretion that took place 10 years earlier, but would prove to be damaging for Standish--personally and professionally--if the secret were revealed.

"Most of my revisions center on making the dialogue more modern," asserts the amiable Zarko, a Sunnyvale, Cal. native and founding artistic director of the Metropolitan Playhouse. "I also rewrote the ending. It's now more ambiguous. Contemporary audiences like ambiguity. They also like the idea of the bad guys getting their comeuppance, which happens here. And, most important, the women are stronger in my adaptation, although they are strong in the original as well. I just emphasize that strength?show what's already there."

Zarko admits that there are dated elements in the work; nonetheless, he remains convinced of its timeliness. "That's what attracted me to the play. It draws a connection to the past. A time-bridge."

Forgetting History

Zarko, who recently stepped down as artistic director at the Metropolitan Playhouse, has directed more than 80 productions at regional theatres and festivals nationwide. He is an associate member of the faculty at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a member of SSDC, and a playwright, with 15 productions of his plays in various theatres throughout the country. Still, he is most identified with Metropolitan Playhouse and its aesthetic as embodied in such works as "The Woman."

"The period between the Civil War and World War I was the most prolific theatrical era in America," says Zarko. "A lot of the plays were very bad and deservedly forgotten, but a lot were very good and shaped what followed. Unfortunately, it's very American to forget one's history.

"After World War I," Zarko continues, "two strands of theatre developed that were respected: O'Neill and kitchen-sink realism. Everything else that preceded them was considered to have little social or artistic value. Some of the plays of Rachel Crothers, Harry James Smith, and Langston Mitchell were brilliant, but few have ever heard of them."

Curiously, even DeMille's grandson, head of the late DeMille's estate, was unfamiliar with "The Woman." Existing only on microfilm at the New York Public Library, "The Woman" was transcribed by hand, once the Metropolitan Playhouse received permission to mount the work.

American theatre between the Civil War and World War I runs the gamut from drawing room comedy to pulp fiction dramas that are big on melodrama and sentiment, observes Zarko. "But what unifies all these plays is the heightened language, and the emphases on plot development, with lots of characters."

Zarko says he encounters many grateful audience members who love the big old-fashioned plot-driven scripts that are (from their point of view) mercifully devoid of elbow nudging or irony.

Actors also enjoy the conventional potboiler, although it represents an unfamiliar and difficult genre for many performers who are not used to the style or content of the language, adds Zarko. "And it's hard for them to allow the words to speak for themselves. They often want to make it sound realistic and that doesn't work with elevated language.

"Many contemporary actors also find it difficult to tackle a theatre of ideas or politics," Zarko underscores. "They're looking for emotional subtext when that's not what it's about."


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