Winning Cast in a Must-see, Superbly Designed and Brilliantly Written Play at Arena Stage
The Age of Innocence
Arena Stage
Jordan Wright
March 9, 2025
Special to The Zebra
Delphi Borich (May Welland), A.J. Shively (Newland Archer), and Shereen Ahmed (Countess Ellen Olenska) in The Age of Innocence at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater running February 28 – March 30, 2025. (Photo/Daniel Rader)
Karen Zacarías’s brilliantly imagined stage adaption of Edith Wharton’s classic novel is an absolute gem with Tim Mackabee’s elaborate set replete with floating chandeliers, theatre boxes that jut out above the stage from all four corners to reveal high society opera attendees dressed to the nines in Victorian splendor, and a separate center stage that rises and falls with each new intimate scene. If you are wistful to see this novel come alive, you’ll swoon for it. It’s sophisticated and elegant, as expected, wrapped around a tragic story of unrequited love.
The Age of Innocence is brilliantly cast with huge Broadway actor and local beloved Felicia Curry in the starring role of Granny as well as serving as the story’s narrator, the ravishing Shereen Ahmed, another Broadway luminary as femme fatale Countess Ellen Olenska and the very debonair and impressive actor A. J. Shively as the impassioned lover, Newland Archer. He will sweep you off your feet!
A.J. Shively (Newland Archer) and Delphi Borich (May Welland) (Photo/Daniel Rader)
Intrigue abounds in the salons of New York high society and this story has it in spades. The “Old Four Hundred” as they were known in the Gilded Age, ruled like royalty. Four hundred families set the tone for proper manners and acceptable behavior in society. These strict societal edicts were etched in stone like the sermon on the mount and impossible to adhere to due to the vagaries of love and human emotion.
Slimy mountebanks with questionable titles swept in from overseas to relieve these august families of their wealth or young heiresses of their dowries. Pretentious fops and empty-headed debutantes fill out the inner circle. It wasn’t as unruffled as it seemed to those looking in from outside the gates. And that’s exactly what makes this fast-moving plot so delicious. Because in this microcosm of the well-to-do, gossip reigned supreme and these elegant dowagers are superb at taking each other down.
Shereen Ahmed (Countess Ellen Olenska) and Delphi Borich (May Welland) (Photo/Daniel Rader)
Only Newland Archer seems to rail at society’s hypocrisies “Women ought to be free,” he announces to one and all. Everyone else just goes along with the unspoken rules imbuing Granny as the arbiter of all family disputes. When Ellen appears at a dinner Granny refers to her parents as “Continental wanderers” (Heaven forfend!) alluding to her failed marriage to a brutal Count. You may recall Newland’s sister, Janey, who poses the query, “We can’t behave like people in novels, can we? We can’t be vulgar.”
Fabio Toblini’s costumes are drop dead fabulous. Outstanding is Ellen’s full-length red satin dress that calls to mind John Singer Sargent’s portraits of the period.
This is a winning cast in a must-see, profoundly creative, superbly designed and written play.
Highly recommended!
Shereen Ahmed (Countess Ellen Olenska) and A.J. Shively (Newland Archer)(Photo/Daniel Rader)
With Regina Aquino as Mrs. Archer and Others; Delphi Borich as May Welland; Lise Bruneau as Mrs. van der Luyden; Anna Theoni DiGiovanni as Janey Archer and Others; Paolo Montalban as Julius Beaufort and Others; Noah Mutterperl as Valet and Others; Anthony Newfield as Sillerton Jackson and Others; Natalya Lynette Rathnam as Mrs. Welland and Others; and Jacob Yeh as Dallas Archer and Others.
Expertly directed by Hana S. Sharif; Lighting Design by Xavier Pierce; Wig and Hair Design by Tommy Kurzman; Original Music and Sound Design by Charles Coes & Nathan A. Roberts; Dramaturg Otis-Ramsey-Zöe.
Through March 30th at Arena Stage, 1101 6th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20024. For tickets and information call the box office at 202 488-3300 or visit www.ArenaStage.org.