Woman's Way

In this sharp 1915 comedy, a wife prepares for battle. She's cornered her husband and his mistress in a country house, ready to unleash righteous fury upon the woman who's stolen her marriage. But the woman waiting for her isn't the villain she imagined. She's witty, graceful, and utterly unflappable, a adversary so charming that the wife finds herself strangely undone. What ensues is a delicious war of social weapons, where every compliment cuts deeper than insult, and the line between adversary and ally blurs entirely. Thompson Buchanan understands that the most dangerous people aren't the ones who fight openly, but those who smile while dismantling your entire worldview. The play is a forgotten gem of American theater, a comedy of manners that gleefully dissects the theater of marriage, the performance of respectability, and the particular horror of meeting the other woman and finding you almost prefer her to yourself.