Don’t forget your red hat

Beware of women in red hats and purple dresses. Known as thThe Red Hat Society women meet in public, decked out in red hats and purple dresses in defiance to society’s expectations. Local red-hatted groups have been spotted here in Sacramento, flaunting their ripening maturity and attitudes.

The loosely created groups celebrate a poem by Jenny Joseph that states, “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat, which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me, and I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer loves.” It speaks to a generation of women who lived lives for other people and played roles that society deemed proper and who now feel it’s their time to break free.

Playwright Claudia Allen captures this spirit with two exceptional characters in her two-woman play Fossils, now at the Sacramento Theatre Company. Although Allen doesn’t refer directly to the Red Hat Society or the poem, it’s clear she lovingly speaks the same language and embraces a generation of women who spent years yearning to throw caution to the wind.

Abigail (Ann Whitney) is a retired professor, reticent and proper, who has lived a quiet, constrained life without passions. While vacationing at a Michigan summer cottage, she meets a fellow guest, retired teacher Carrie (Mary Ann Thebus), a blustering spirit who is as secretive as she is carefree. It’s clear from the outset that the women couldn’t be more different in politics and religion, yet both are beginning to blossom with newfound freedoms.

The conversations ebb and flow, from the serious to the mundane, from old loves to new dreams, from regrets to remembrances and from secrets and lies to truths and dares.

The acting and directing are seamless, with actresses Thebus and Whitney exhibiting the marrows of their characters and with director Sandy Shinner gracefully moving them from scene to scene. The characters are so wonderful, so full of vim and vinegar, that it’s a shame that the same playwright who created such multi-dimensional women is the same one who disappoints us in the end.

Unfortunately, playwright Allen doesn’t trust either the characters’ or the audience’s intelligence; either she dances around obvious subjects, or, more egregiously, she slaps on a completely unrealistic ending that insults both her characters and her audience. Allen’s saving grace is her creation of these two feisty, independent women, infusing them with dialogue and an emerging relationship that’s wonderful to witness. These are two women you’d love to share a porch with any time. Just don’t forget your red hat.