The New York International Fringe Festival is known for producing shows that push boundaries and test audience expectations. Sometimes the plays in question test our expectations with in-your-face titles like Mother Eve’s Secret Garden of Sensual Sisterhood, I Married a Nun, or The Underdeveloped and Overexposed Life and Death of Deena Domino. Other plays challenge us in more subtle ways, inviting us in with open arms and slowly making us reconsider our perceptions of love. June and Nancy is one of those plays, a love story between two women that is much more likely to touch us in the heart than get in our face.
The plot of June and Nancy is one we’ve seen before: an idle 1950s housewife is unhappy in her marriage to a well-meaning but clueless husband. She falls in love with someone else, and through this affair, she discovers new things about herself, finds her joie de vivre, and feels re-inspired to pursue her artistic desires. What makes June and Nancy different is that the housewife in question falls in love with another woman, and that the time discussing sexual orientation and sexual identity is very little. June (Michelle Ramoni) and Nancy (Gabrielle Maisels) are less conflicted about What It Means to Be Gay than they are about how to navigate the world as women – one who can’t pursue art without facing discouragement from her husband, and another who is established in her career but can’t command the respect she’s earned.
Written by Michelle Ramoni, June and Nancy is a play about people who are afraid of change. June wants to be with Nancy but doesn’t want to hurt her husband Marty (Jeffrey Coyne), and probably doesn’t want to break from her comfortable, if unsatisfying, status quo. Marty is focused on his career and doesn’t want his wife’s artistic pursuits to disrupt their life – both because he doesn’t like the inconvenience and because he doesn’t want his wife’s feelings to be hurt if she should fail. Jerry, June’s old friend who works at the MOMA with her (played by Peter Daniel Straus), can encourage June to pursue a path that he lacks courage and ability to pursue himself. Only Nancy has the strength to forge a new life for herself when her old job falls through, but she’s left spinning her wheels and frustrated when the competing desires of the other characters prevent her from achieving every part of her dream.
One aspect of the play that’s not afraid of change is the red plush futon in the middle of the stage, a malleable set piece that is folded and unfolded to serve multiple functions: the seat in the middle of the MOMA exhibit, the couch in Marty and June’s apartment, and the bed in Nancy’s room, among others. Director Kate Holland and stage manager Justin Cornell use the piece to great effect, as the shape-shifting futon serves as places where June has relationships at different levels of intimacy – and only when in bed with Nancy is the set piece pushed to the side of the stage, as though to give the lovers a sense of privacy.
The love story is by far the best aspect of this play. The actresses play their parts with such tenderness and affection for each other that my breath caught several times when watching them. Michelle Ramoni is warm, gentle, and passionate as June, and Gabrielle Maisels combines a sense of maturity and hopeful idealism in Nancy. Whenever Nancy looks at June, she seems like she can’t believe her incredible luck at finding such a woman, and the sentiment is returned when June draws Nancy and says through tears, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” The expression of love between them is mesmerizing and I couldn’t look away any time they gazed at each other.
June and Nancy has other character moments that don’t work quite as well. June’s argument with Marty about her drinking problem brings up a character trait that is intriguing but underdeveloped, and while Peter Daniel Straus is charming and likable as Jerry, I didn’t quite buy him and June as friends who had known each other since college. Despite those minor flaws, the play is still a moving production about people who struggle to find happiness even while resisting change. After the curtain call, I needed a moment to collect myself before exiting the theater, something that I haven’t had to do in a long time.
June and Nancy played at the Kraine Theater on 85 East 4th St between August 17 and August 26.
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