The Rep’s “Three Tall Women” is a Sock to the Gut (In a Good Way)

Megan Cole, Alexandra Tavares, and Suzanne Bouchard in Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. Photo by Chris Bennion

Proust coined the term “involuntary memory” to describe recollections triggered by cues in everyday life. Famously, the French writer used a cookie as a literary device in illustration of this notion. I am no Proust expert by any stretch. (Dear In Search of Lost Time: Seriously dude, tl;dr.) Yet Proust was certainly on my mind during Three Tall Women (Seattle Repertory Theatre, through Nov. 28; tickets).

The 92-year-old, (or 91–she’s not sure), nameless central character in Edward Albee’s 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning script is layer upon layer of involuntary memories, each notion connecting tangentially to some other in an ever-denser web of senile dementia. Her memories are little other than involuntary, in fact. Albee’s lead (Megan Cole, delivering a riveting performance in a difficult role) remembers everything, although rarely in the right order and almost never on command.

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The play’s second act unravels the tangled threads of the first by way of three women (Cole, Suzanne Bouchard, and Alexandra Tavares), each in a different stage of her life. I’m being intentionally vague here, as there’s some theatre magic involved and I don’t want to spoil it for those not already familiar with the script.

What I will say, no spoiler alert necessary, is that this is a sometimes tricky play about memory, aging, and perception, and the Rep’s production rises to the challenge on all fronts. Cole, Bouchard, and Tavares all deliver fantastic performances. Bouchard’s spirited monologue in the second act is almost reason enough on its own to see this show.

Matthew Smucker’s beautifully minimal set suggests an entire room without actually being one. It’s an abstraction of a space, the vaguest memory of an actual location represented on stage. Smucker’s set complements smart costumes by Melanie Taylor Burgess, lighting by Allen Hahn, and sound by Paul James Prendergast. The result is an existential world that lives outside of time but falls in and out of phase with it. It’s both engaging and slightly disorienting.

After the first show in the Rep’s 10/11 season left me disappointed, Three Tall Women makes up for it and then some. Seattle-based director Allison Narver and her superlative cast and design team have done something worth remembering here. If God of Carnage was a nudge to the rib, Women is a punch to the gut, obstinately demanding that you look at the big picture, and take off those rose-colored glasses while you’re at it. It’s theatre you can connect with, and the Rep pulls it off masterfully.