Breakfast Plays: A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity

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For those who can bear the early start, the Traverse’s morning plays are often the home of small, hidden treats, serving up a surprising slice of theatre while the rest of the city is still shaking off its hangover. This year, in A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity, early risers are offered an unexpected abundance of expletives with their coffee and bacon butties.

Douglas Maxwell’s potty-mouthed breakfast offering wraps a wry contemplation on language in an unlikely friendship between a widow and one of her late husband’s young employees. Annabelle has spent her whole life cultivating small talk, making an art out of saying nothing. After a chance encounter with plain-talking Jim at her husband’s funeral, however, Annabelle decides to unleash every four-letter word in the book. Enlisting a reluctant and bemused Jim in this new hobby, she drops the f-bomb at local committee meetings and bellows abuse from football stands.

But this is more than just swearing on a whim. Beneath the comedy of Annabelle’s unusual project, there are lingering questions about the purpose of language and how to find one’s voice. For Joanna Tope’s buttoned-up Annabelle, this outburst of suppressed vulgarity is a glorious release, while Scott Fletcher’s awkward Jim gradually finds validation for his own form of expression.

It’s difficult to escape the sense, however, that the plot is just an excuse for Maxwell to exercise his linguistic muscles. This extended skit offers its playwright, like his protagonist, an entertaining but fairly empty opportunity to get inventive with his obscenities.