Two generations face off in off-Broadway’s “When We Were Young and Unafraid.”
The older, wiser woman is Agnes (Cherry Jones), a former military nurse who runs a B&B that doubles as a haven for battered wives. One night, 25-year-old Mary Anne (Zoe Kazan) turns up with a bloodied brow and a small suitcase, unleashing dramatic — sometimes melodramatic — events.
Playwright Sarah Treem deftly mixes psychological realism and tense genre action. Under Pam MacKinnon’s assured direction, the show often plays out like a thriller complete with double-crosses and long-buried secrets.
The glue holding those occasionally forced strands together is Kazan, finally making good on years of being hailed as the next big thing. Here, she’s captivating as a woman who’s learned to survive partly by presenting a different face to different people.
Mary Anne is deferential to Agnes, but with her host’s teen daughter, Penny (Morgan Saylor), she’s like a brazen older sister, smoking and advising her how to pick up boys.
And then there’s Paul (Patch Darragh), a guest at the inn. With him, Mary Anne’s a flirt, doing what she thinks is expected of her.
But not everyone in their mid-20s thinks along those lines, even in 1973, when the play is set. Take Hannah (Cherise Boothe), a radical feminist who spouts fabulous ’70s-vintage statements like
“Passivity is the minotaur every woman needs to slay in order to leave the labyrinth.”
Hannah is on her way to the promised “womynland,” a commune where, she informs Agnes, “there are no men anywhere, not even in the name.”
While Mary Anne plays by men’s rules, Hannah declines to enter their game. Yet both would agree that, with life itself in the balance, the stakes are high.