Bridesmaids Hit Cotuit Stage in "Five Women Wearing the Same Dress"

By: iO Staff, September 12, 2012

DANIEL FONTNEAU/CCFTA - The cast of "Five Women" (from left): Leigh Hale, Anna Botsford, Jess Emerson, Jennifer Perrault and Meg Askew. The play opens at Cotuit Center for the Arts on September 13 and runs through September 30.

The dramedy Five Women Wearing the Same Dress—a funny, irreverent, and touching celebration of the female spirit—graces the Cotuit Center for the Arts stage from September 13 to 30.

Written in 1993 by Alan Ball, the award-winning creator of two HBO drama series, Six Feet Under and True Blood, and the movie American Beauty, the play is part of CCFTA's ongoing discussion of gender in the arts this fall.

Centered around an ostentatious wedding reception at a palatial Knoxville, Tennessee, estate, five reluctant bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom, each with her own reason for avoiding the proceedings below.

Directed by Melinda Gallant of Sandwich, the show stars Jennifer Perrault of Mashpee as Meredith Marlow, the sarcastic, pot-smoking, bitter younger sister of the bride; Leigh Hale of Orleans as Georgeanne Darby, the bride’s “ugly sidekick” in middle school, heartbroken over her own failed marriage; Anna Botsford of Centerville as the jaded Trisha, who dates a lot of men who do not quite measure up; Jess Emerson of Marstons Mills as Frances, a very naïve and religious cousin of the bride; and Meg Askew of Cotuit as Mindy McClure, the outspoken lesbian older sister of the groom.

Troy Davies of Barnstable plays the only man in the play (lucky him!), usher Tripp Davenport.

The women, relative strangers to each other at first, share a hatred of the bride, jealous because she seems to have it all. During the course of the evening, they smoke, drink, and complain, discussing everything from love and relationships to religion, physical beauty, and personal pain, as they look down on the reception from above.

“All the women are different, but they are strong characters in their own right, and, as they share intimacies, they begin to understand each other a little better,” says Gallant. “It is a wonderful celebration of the spirit of women."