Written in 1913, First Produced by the Washington Square Players in November 1915
SUMMARY
Wealthy high society woman Harriet Goodrich invites Margaret Caldwell, the wife of her rejected former beau, to tea. Harriet’s husband is wealthy while Margaret’s husband is a starving artist. While Margaret and Harriet pretend everything is fine and they are both happy and successful, their inner selves, Hetty and Maggie, fight over men, money, and cake.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS PLAY
- Overtones reads like an improv scene. Each character is played by two actors, one represents the character’s true thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and the other represents the mask they present to the world. The audience gets to experience the character through both actors and the subtext of the play is communicated to the audience.
- This play can be used in performance classes to help students understand subtext.
- It is excellent to read alongside Susan Glaspell’s Trifles to show the “secret” inner life of women and how their identities were attached to men.
- It has interesting use of different types of status markers (automobiles, telephones, dining at the Ritz, crowned heads of Europe, “real” versus “commercial” art, etc.).
- The tone and spirit of the play is like a Saturday Night Live skit or Key & Peele’s Anger Translator sketches, only fully fleshed out.
- The pacing of the play is fast and the play can be read in 15 minutes!
MEMORABLE LINES
HARRIET [to MARGARET]. How many lumps?
MAGGIE [to MARGARET]. Sugar is nourishing.
MARGARET [to HARRIET]. Three, please. I used to drink very sweet coffee in Turkey and ever since I’ve–
Hetty. I don’t believe you ever were in Turkey.
MAGGIE. I wasn’t, but it is none of your business.
HARRIET [pouring tea]. Have you been in Turkey, do tell me about it.
MAGGIE [to MARGARET]. Change the subject.
***
HARRIET. Whom is he going to paint here?
MAGGIE [frightened]. What names dare I make up?
MARGARET [calmly]. Just at present Miss Dorothy Ainsworth of Oregon is posing. You may not know the name, but she is the daughter of a wealthy miner who found gold in Alaska.
HARRIET. I dare say there are many Western people we have never heard of.
HISTORICAL NOTES
- The Washington Square Players were one of the influential groups during the Little Theatre Movement (1910s-1930s). Some other important Little Theatre groups include The Provincetown Players, the Hull House Theatre Group, Toy Theatre, and Pasadena Community Playhouse.
- Overtones was adapted as a piece for vaudeville in 1916.
- Gerstenberg wrote a less-frequently produced three-act version of Overtones in 1929.
- Overtones is frequently produced with Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.
- Mirror selves and characters speaking their inner thoughts in Overtones predates Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1928) and Great God Brown (1922, revised 1926).
Overtones is accessible on Project Gutenberg. (Please note: The play is part of the collection of plays produced by the Washington Square Players in the early 20th century. Some of the other plays (ahem, that’s you, Eugenically Speaking) may not be palatable.)
Photo Credit: Terri Cnuddle, “Vintage Tea Cup,” 2017