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# All about vanities
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/all-about-vanities/
- Published: 2008-09-06T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:56:15.000Z
- Author: Cynthia Citron
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

IN 1980 ONE OF THE LONGEST-RUNNING Off-Broadway productions closed after charming New York audiences for more than four and a half years. The play was “Vanities,” by Jack Heifner, and it followed the friendship of three young women from their high school years to middle age.

Now, some 28 years later, this comedy-drama has been restyled as a musical with music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum, staging by Dan Knechtges, and direction by two-time Tony Award-winning actress Judith Ivey.

The three stars, seen first as giddy pompom girls, are Mary, played by Lauren Kennedy, Joanne, played by Elizabeth Brackenbury, and Kathy, Anneliese van der Pol. Kathy, the consummate organizer, takes charge of everything, scattering lists and to-do sheets everywhere she goes.

Joanne, even in high school, has her future set: she hopes to marry Ted, her steady boyfriend, and fill the house with their kids.

Mary is the wild one, the flirtatious glamor girl who is dating her way through all the sports studs in school.

The setting is a small Texas town in 1963 and the music that accompanies this introduction to the girls includes “Who Am I Today?” and “Hey There, Beautiful,” both of which serve to clarify their tentative identities at this stage of their lives.

In the next scene they are getting ready to graduate from college in Dallas, and fretting about whether the new crop of pledges will maintain the high standards of their sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, or KKG, which Joanne insists on translating as Keys to the Kingdom of God. They are excited about stepping off into the future as they sing, “We’re Gonna Be Okay.”

Having drifted apart, they meet again after 10 years on the terrace of Kathy’s elegant New York penthouse. She lives quietly, has given up her frenzied organizing, and seems to be depressed. “Once you lose your way,” she muses, “does the sadness stay?”

Mary, on the other hand, is dressed in the latest fashion, owns an art gallery that specializes in porn and is dating a man who is “almost 20.”

And Joanne has married Ted, filled her house with kids and has a drinking problem. She is wearing an outfit that could have come straight out of Dorothy’s closet in Oz. For the first time, these “best friends forever” begin to wonder what they ever saw in each other. Obviously, as they near 30 they apparently have little in common and their conversation is both hesitant and stiff.

Finally, they meet again in Texas in 1990 and, having mastered adulthood at long last, they sing a paean to the wisdom that comes with maturity. The song is called “Letting Go” and it’s a rousing number to close the show. Happily, all three women have strong melodious voices that actually do more for the songs than the music warrants.

Despite the accompaniment of a fine eight-piece band, the songs don’t have the audience dancing in the aisles. What is it about modern musicals that leave you feeling that you wouldn’t recognize the songs if you heard them again two minutes after you left the theater? Where are today’s Rodgers and Hammerstein, the Gershwins, or even an Irving Berlin, for heaven’s sake!

“Vanities — A New Musical” is scheduled to open in New York in late February 2009\. But you can catch it here at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., in Pasadena Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. through Sept. 28\. For tickets, call (626) 356-PLAY.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 6, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/090608.pdf?ref=smdp.com)