Little Women

Gate Theatre, Dublin

“Men have to work and women have to marry for money,” sighs Meg, the eldest of the March family. In the opening scene of this adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century children’s classic, she spells out life’s necessities to her sisters. Yet marrying for money is precisely what these resilient young women resist doing, which is one of the reasons the story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy has been cherished by generations of female readers.

Films, plays and musicals have re-created the New England world of the March sisters and their ever-loving mother, Marmee, growing up during the American civil war while their father is away at the front. While adaptations tend towards the saccharine, Ann-Marie Casey’s well-judged new script extracts the most appealing aspects of Little Women and its sequel Good Wives, and jettisons the earnestly pious sections. So, while Marmee gives the girls a homily about the importance of being good and thinking of the misfortunes of others, we quickly move on to the fun stuff. And, in director Michael Barker-Caven’s well-upholstered production, genteel poverty doesn’t look too arduous.

In a succession of ensemble scenes, we watch Meg dressing up in high heels and curls to find a beau; the complacent Amy falling through the ice and almost drowning; Beth wasting away through sheer saintliness; and the headstrong, slang-loving Jo, writing short stories, romping with Laurie, “the Laurence boy”, next door, and cutting off her hair for cash. The author’s alter ego, Jo, is the most fully characterised of the sisters and the mouthpiece of the books’ more radical ideas: that a woman should not have to marry and be dependent, but could earn her own living through her talents and industry.

Played by Lorna Quinn, Jo is the dramatic centre of this production and the scenes between her and the superb Marty Rea as Laurie are marvellously portrayed, as emerging love complicates the ease of their childhood companionship.

The performances of all four sisters succeed in tracing them from early teens to adulthood, with some delicate moments, even as the overall pace becomes breathless, with huge chunks of plot to be squeezed in. The sense of racing to the end of a potted novel undermines the proposal scene between Jo and her German suitor, Prof Bhaer, where she declares that she will marry him as long as they are equal in economic standing: she will support herself.

“Christopher Columbus!” – it could catch on.

Runs until January 14th