All’s fair in labor and wage: Preview of CSB+SJU Play “Smash”

For their second performance of the season, the CSB+SJU theater department will be performing “Smash” by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by CSB+SJU faculty member Sean Dooley as the last performance for the fall season. The play is based on the novel “An Unsocial Socialist” by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1883. “Smash,” set at the end of Edwardian England in 1910, follows millionaire socialist Sidney Trefusis, who, on his wedding day, leaves his wife Henrietta Jansenius for fear of their marriage/love/passion thwarting his plans to overthrow the British government.

Cue his infiltration into Alton College, a girl’s school, by disguising himself as a common laborer named “Mengels.” There, he plans to plant seeds of radical socialism into malleable girls’ thoughts before they go on to become future consorts of kings and cabinet ministers. While he prepares for the future of Britain, he doesn’t prepare for his own future, which includes a love-triangle, pistols, rounds of croquet and the return of Henrietta, played by CSB senior Julia Christenson.

While Henrietta is looking to change her situation, Christenson is looking at what Henrietta and the other characters are saying and how it’s being said.

“For an American audience, I think it’s just fun to hear your friends and classmates speak in a different way…we get to play around with something that’s…a little new,” Christenson said. “It is nice to…bring some levity to talking about politics in the year that we’re in.”

CSB+SJU’s theater program is open to all students—majors, minors and non-majors and minors—to participate in, and the program produces four full-length productions each year of varying genres. The breadth of programs allows students to train and further what they know about theater in both a correct and safe manner. From dance study classes on technique and choreography to production lab on each element of a play’s foundation and its success, it balances the act of learning with the plays’ humor and tone. This is something CSB freshman and theater minor Tori Grandy, who plays Agatha Wylie, and SJU freshman Vincein DuFresne-To, who plays the groundskeeper, Lumpkin, can speak to.

“There’s so much of what we’ve done in this play that is so new to me…I’ve never had to do intimacy training before…and I am so lucky to be surrounded by such a wonderful cast, in such a tight, close-knit group,” Grandy said.

“It’s definitely one of the most hilarious things I’ve worked on…and the crew is also great,” DuFresne-To said.

The play’s characters, though a century past, all have distinct personalities that CSB freshman Lilli Midy, who plays Gertrude Lindsay finds similar to her own.

“She reminds me a lot of myself. I’m a very blunt person, but I won’t be blunt to your face. Gertrude will be blunt to your face,” Midy said.

“Smash” will be performed in the Gorecki Theater in the Benedicta Art Center on Nov. 7, 8, 9 and 14, 15, 16 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 10 at 2 pm. For more information on the play, future theater events or the department, visit their website at www.csbsju.edu/theater/.