Moore strikes not a single false note in her portrayal of Catherine, a sweet, shy, mid-19th century miss who is treated cruelly once too often. I'm not sure why this actress is not better known but I can only hope that she will gain close attention and high praise for her rich, detailed, extraordinarily sensitive performance here. In the central role of Catherine Sloper, Kelly Ann Moore is superb. Finally, though the business of having the cast draw thick drapes back and forth across the front of the playing area may sound interesting on paper and is dramatically effective at times, it has such an adverse affect on the sightlines that it must finally be considered a mistake. Wilhelmi's sound design for this show at The Mint Space on West 43rd Street are of an extremely high level for an Equity showcase production, David Dunford's lighting design isn't very good - even if one makes allowances for what Dunford had (or didn't have) to work with. While Jo Winiarski's scenic design, Oana-Botez-Ban's costume design, and Joel R. Austin Sloper but his lack of concentration and his tendency to stumble over lines combine to make the performance barely acceptable - a pity, because it's such a great role. James Jacobson seems to have it in him to give a fine portrayal of the rigid Dr. Since the flaws of the Roundtable production matter so little in the long run, let's get them out of the way right off the bat. Washington Square was published in 1880 and the original Broadway production of The Heiress opened at the Biltmore Theatre in 1947 but human nature hasn't changed in the intervening decades and, therefore, this wonderfully well written play is timeless. (The one-sentence IMDb description of the film sums up the plot of the stage play and the movie quite succinctly: "A young, naive woman falls for a handsome young man who her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.") There was an exemplary Broadway revival of the play in 1995 with a cast led by Cherry Jones, Philip Bosco, and Jon Tenney, directed by the recently deceased Gerald Gutierrez.
It's safe to say that most people today know the Goetz adaptation through the 1949 film version that stars Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Ralph Richardson under the direction of William Wyler. The play is loosely based on the Henry James novel Washington Square. A perfect example of this is the current Roundtable Ensemble revival of Ruth & Augustus Goetz's The Heiress. But it is true that, if an excellent script is generally well acted and directed, it will play like gangbusters even if the production has significant flaws. Michael Balsley and Kelly Ann Moore in The HeiressĪlthough some people say you can't kill a good play, that's not really true.
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