The Theatre: 'Molly'

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["Molly"]—not a comedy but often funny—is about a woman who allows herself to become overwhelmed by feeling…. Molly is an Englishwoman, presumably still in her thirties, who has just moved back to England from Canada with her elderly, deaf Canadian husband…. There is quite a lot of action. They hire a local boy—a pimply adolescent—as gardener and chauffeur, and before long Molly seduces him. The plot is concerned with that seduction and its consequences, yet the drama is primarily one of character and mood. When we first see Molly, she is distracted and half out of her mind with boredom and sexual frustration, trying to conceal her irritation with her bumbling, impotent husband…. Her sharp, witty lines need no muffling, since they fall on literally deaf ears…. The play is also about casual double-dealing with deaf people and its consequences. In the climactic scene, the husband talks of the bored, contemptuous expression he always sees on the faces of those around him, and how it is belied by their foolish, cheerful words, and then, revealing his awareness of what has been going on, furiously spits at the boy….

"Molly" ends with a burst of melodrama that I wouldn't dream of revealing (the play is based on an actual event in England in 1936), and while it is not a flawless work, it adds up to a generally accomplished evening.

Edith Oliver, "The Theatre: 'Molly'," in The New Yorker (© 1978 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. LIII, No. 51, February 6, 1978, p. 68.

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