Adapting classic literature for the stage filtered through a contemporary lens has been the province, if not the raison d’etre, of playwright and actress Kate Hamill. Concentrating on works with significant and important female characters, Hamill is known for adapting—and often starring in the premiere productions—classics like Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility, the latter of which found its way onto the Clarence Brown Theatre stage this fall. [Review: CBT’s Sense and Sensibility]
Interestingly, Knoxville’s River and Rail Theatre Company has chosen another Hamill adaptation for its final production in the Old City Performing Arts space on State Street, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. [River & Rail Finds “Forever Home” Along Magnolia Avenue]
The novel’s story, of course, is a look at four teenage sisters growing from childhood to adulthood during the Civil War in a New England town. While their father is away at the war, they are guided by their mother through the trials and deprivations of the time. Having offered that, it is fair to say that Hamill has exercised considerable theatrical license in projecting her own anachronistic take on issues and events on which the novel is constructed.
Adapting familiar and beloved works of fiction requires more than a little theatrical courage, something that Hamill obviously has in abundance. Because Little Women has also been the subject of notable film adaptations over the years that contribute to the familiarity, Hamill’s departure from the audience’s expectations of the characters and their issues asks more questions than it answers. Those characters and issues have been given a contemporary lens by the playwright, one in which issues such as gender identity, sexual harassment, and depression challenges the audience in a number of ways. Not the least of these challenges is a believable and acceptable storytelling departure that has true timelessness and validity.
Hamill’s adaptation, directed here for River and Rail by Laura Dupper, takes different twists and turns and centers almost exclusively on the tomboy-ish, wannabe writer Jo, brought to life by the energetic and insightful Molly Brennan. Although Alcott goes nowhere near homosexuality in describing Jo, Hamill presents it obliquely as the reason Jo avoids a romantic relationship with the next-door neighbor—and best friend—Laurie, strongly and beautifully rendered here by Boone Sommers.
Through a majority of the play, I feared that the role of the eldest sister, Meg (Sarah Wahrmund), was unforgivingly under-written, but she does get a marvelous scene in Act II to fill in some blanks in the character. As the gentle and sickly Beth, Ella Trisler did a remarkable job in giving it the essence of thoughtfulness. The indulged, youngest sister Amy was treated to a marvelous portrayal by Caroline Alley in which she somehow made the childhood to adult leap of selfishness make sense. Magdalen Zinky was perfect as Marmee, providing just the right amount of dramatic glue that the environment of the four sisters needed. Filling out the cast was Brady Craddock as the tutor Mr. Brooks, with a contrasting side-role of Dashwood; Denise Blank as the irksome Aunt March; Dave Dupper handled the two small roles of Mr. Laurence and Mr. March.
Those that have never read Alcott’s Little Women, and/or the sequels, will hopefully have an easier time sifting through the characterizations in Hamill’s adaptation than will those that have read and enjoyed the novel at some time in their life. Although Dupper’s cast turned in a strongly atmospheric work that had moments of true humor and brilliance, the play takes another path, missing the novel’s important premise of the loving family bonds that grow stronger in the face of society’s deprivations.
River and Rail Theatre Company: Little Women by Kate Hamill
Director: Laura Dupper
With: Molly Brennan, Sarah Wahrmund, Ella Trisler, Caroline Alley, Magdalen Zinky, Boone Sommers, Brady Craddock, Denise Blank, Dave Dupper
Running Thursdays – Sundays, December 4 – 21, 2025
Old City Performing Arts Center, 111 State Street
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