02/23/2017
Remembering two wonderful reviews from our Fringe run! Take a read if you like. These reviews were written before all of the arduous yet joyous re-writes we have done post Fringe Festival 2015! Can't wait to see what everyone thinks of the NEW TGF! Industry reading around the bend, March 10th. See you there!
More Great Forgotten Please
Isabel Zamaroni NYC Freelance Journalist
Although New York’s famed International Fringe Festival is officially a memory; one indelible play in particular, left me riveted and yearning for more. The Great Forgotten, was a compelling narrative, written by, Karen and Kacie Devaney, about two American sisters, Celia and Elizabeth, who give their services as nurses during WWI, in France. They experience the travesties of the trenches but also the comradery of laboring long hours with other women, who joined the Army in hopes of making a difference.
When Elizabeth and Celia return to their home town in New York City, the Roaring Twenties is ablaze and they become flappers dancing at a local Speak Easy. Celia embraces the new found freedom for women, reveling in the gaiety of the twenties, where women’s self-expression was paramount. Elizabeth, on the other hand, remains tortured by the traumas she witnessed and the love she lost. She suffers from what today we diagnose as, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
The veracity and stunning portrayal of the nursing scenes was striking. When, I ask, has Broadway or Hollywood honored nurses of war, told their side of the stories? The nurses of WWI, were sent overseas before any man set foot on foreign soil. After toiling in the trenches as Army nurses, when they returned to the states their rank and title was lowered to that of volunteer.
The Great Forgotten was a poignant play that captured the journey of women during the war and the ensuing lack of historic recognition for their efforts. The verbiage and dialogue was authentic as was the acting and it was obvious the playwrights did their research. While the set was minimalized, the director, Paul Morris did a beautiful job of telling the story and creating a believable posse of soldiers, nurses, and flappers. Francis Patrelle, a renowned New York choreographer, with fifty original ballets under his belt from his company, Dances Patrelle, choreographed the dance scenes in The Great Forgotten, which were; brilliant, b***y, and thoroughly entertaining. Kacie Devaney, Julie Voshell, and Morgan Doelp were mesmerizing to watch.
The scenes flip flop between a Speak Easy in New York City, where Elizabeth meets a veteran, Ben, and the actual war scenes that take place in France at a makeshift hospital known as Evac 5. The interactions between the French and American soldiers and the nurses was imbued with genuine French accents and gave lilt and levity to the war scenes. The language barrier, among the lead actors, Julie Voshell who played Elizabeth and Martin Balaguer as Leandre, a French Lieutenant and Elizabeth’s lover, was endearing, romantic even. The playwrights’ clever device of capturing the war stories through a conversation between two veterans, works beautifully.
Both Kacie Devaney, who played the role of Celia, and Julie Voshell (Elizabeth), were convincing. The touching scenes between the sisters brought tears to many in the audience. The subject matter, spanned women’s right to vote, to birth control, to women getting equal pay as men in the workforce, all done under the guise of conversation—and it struck a chord with the fact that women still today, are not on equal footing with their male counterparts. Birth control, abortion, and women fettered by world=wide inequality remain relevant topics today.
We need more plays like The Great Forgotten to remember the infinite struggles that remain pertinent, not only for women, but for all those who have suffered and struggled to be heard. This is a fresh piece with all the elements that make theatre great—beauty, tragedy, and impeccable storytelling. In 2015, all facets of the theatre remain dominated by men, and women playwrights remain in the shadows. This play is deserving of a larger production to bring its message and artistry to audiences yearning for more than fifty shades of rehashed shows.
Review/ “The Great Forgotten”
Louise A. Gikow
Can any individual heal him or herself when an entire society is suffering?
In a sense, that’s the question at the center of “The Great Forgotten,” a promising new play written by the mother-and-daughter team of Kacie and Karen Devaney.
The play takes place in 1920, at the beginning of what would soon be dubbed the Roaring Twenties. Young women everywhere have chopped off their hair and cropped their skirts, put in their diaphragms and put out in the back seats of newly-available automobiles. The two lead characters—sisters Elizabeth (Lizzy) and Celia—are dancers in a jazz club, leading what initially seems to be a gay life. But we soon discover that they both served as nurses during World War I. And despite their desperate efforts, it’s clear that they have been unable to put the war behind them.
The Great War caused an enormous loss of life -- by 1918, 16 million young men had perished. The men who came home, immortalized by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald as “The Lost Generation,” never really regained their footing. But what happened to the women of this era is less clear. The Devaney’s make the point that many young women were intimately involved in the struggle, and their pain was equal or sometimes greater than that of the men’s. Women didn’t start the war; they only cleaned up after it. As Lizzy says sardonically after she misses a cue, “It’s not like anyone’s gonna die because I missed a few steps, right?”
While her sister Celia comforts herself in the arms of a man who made it home, Lizzy strikes up a conversation with a veteran who stumbles into the bar. He begins by voicing all sorts of misconceptions about her involvement in the war. When she bitterly tells him that she was probably at the front way longer than he was, he encourages her to tell her story, and she reluctantly agrees.
The play is constructed as a series of flashbacks, traveling from the jazz club where the two sisters entertain to the hospital where they worked during the war and the church where Elizabeth secretly married her lover, who of course later died. The juxtaposition is expertly handled even if the outcome is to be expected.
The play is both a lament to loves and lives lost and a passionate plea for, if not equal rights, at least respect for women’s roles. It tackles a huge span of subjects—war, love, death, feminism, even unwanted pregnancy.
Perhaps this is a bit too much to address, but ultimately, the play rises above it. The writing is passionate, articulate and heart-felt. Will Lizzy eventually heal? A coda suggests she probably won’t. But she will do the next best thing—she’ll go on. Perhaps that’s all we can hope for...and at least for now, perhaps it will have to be good enough.
