Historical fact meets a playwright’s imagination in Anne Undeland’s 2021 play Wharton Between the Sheets, recounting author Edith Wharton’s Parisian love affair with a charming man-about-town. Middlebury Acting Company offers a polished production at Town Hall Theater.
As a theatrical presentation, it’s a stylish jaunt through the arc of a woman’s romance, staged with airy unconventionality and animated performances that express the slightly veiled needs of needy characters. As a story, the play arguably dilutes a real artistic figure by lathering a modern tone on a period piece. But the comedy is a joy to watch.
The story starts in 1908. Wharton, born to a wealthy New York City family, has been raised with balls, fashion, trips to Europe, and marriages based on assets and social position. Her own is typically disappointing, and by the time of the play she has become a literary success and begun traveling without her husband. She arrives in Paris propelled by the triumph of The House of Mirth.
Her great friend Henry James is in Paris as well. His novels aren’t popular, but Edith admires his work even as she joins the chorus of critics frustrated by his dense prose. An Irish maid, Posy, sees to all Edith’s needs and secretly reads her work in progress while ostensibly tidying up. Posy fairly worships Edith, as she confesses directly to the audience while narrating the play.
Then the fascinating Morton Fullerton attends one of Edith’s dinner parties. Fullerton is a sometime journalist and full-time sensualist open to dalliances with men and women. Edith, at 46, has had little sexual experience, but Morton casually kindles her pleasure in erotic love. He’s younger and not the least intimidated by Edith’s renown. Their love affair continues for four years, staged discreetly with no nudity or explicit sex but plenty of coy (and sometimes too cute) pillow talk.
The show works wonderfully as a comedy, leaning especially on Posy’s connection with the audience. But the combination of a modern sensibility with a period setting can feel forced, as Undeland puts contemporary language in Gilded Age mouths. It is funny to hear a modern mockery of staleness, such as Edith realizing that her hairstyle “dates to the Garfield administration,” but resting most of the humor on this tone runs the risk of turning a particular historical figure into a random character in a current play.
The mix of past and present perspectives may invigorate some viewers and frustrate others.
The larger concern is that we don’t quite get transported to artistically bubbling prewar Europe. Henry and Edith never have an intellectual conversation, though they both zero in on their books’ sales — hers, stratospheric; his, dismal. It’s modern shoptalk, not two authors pursuing literary goals.
Viewers keen on biography or unmasking Wharton the celebrity will be disappointed, because the play’s aim is light entertainment. The giddiness of romance comes to her late in life, and, literary giant or not, she must tread the path of any self-conscious teenager. It’s easy to root for her, even though we’re watching her express abandon in historical underwear while speaking with an entirely modern sense of sexual fulfillment. The mix of past and present perspectives may invigorate some viewers and frustrate others.
Director Melissa Lourie stages the show with a delightful looseness about theatrical illusion. Scenic designer John Devlin’s rooms and furniture are distinctly real, and the lovely lavender walls are banded with gold millwork. But realism isn’t always honored; Lourie lets characters exit by any convenient break in the set, and scene changes are stylized.
Movement coordinator Aly Perry developed exquisite physical patterns to amplify the story. As the music of Camille Saint-Saëns plays, summoning the period, Edith awaits letters from Morton that Posy pirouettes to dispense one by one, moving from point to point like a ticking clock to convey the passage of days.
Props and costumes are rigorously real, while stage movement can float into abstraction, giving the production an exhilarating lightness as we seem to watch theater assembled before our eyes. That insouciant thrill is comparable to Edith’s new sexual freedom.
Chris Caswell, as Edith, evolves from self-assured author to self-doubting lover. Caswell makes Edith’s pain at the end of the affair a strong, raw anguish. Jacob A. Ware, as Morton, radiates charm but neatly avoids a con man’s slickness — he’s genuinely offering mutual delight. In the bedroom, one could wish for a hotter fire, but the sense of drowsy pleasure is lovely.
John Nagle plays Henry, a role constructed from superficial details. He’s forced to spend too much time complaining about Edith’s yipping dogs without enough to show the sorrow of wishing for his own connection to Morton. The richest moments, which Nagle plays with sweet sincerity, are exchanges with Edith when their friendship gives them both comfort, including a bit of a caper they pull off.
Posy is the play’s polestar, addressing the audience with disarming candor. As played by Julia Jean, she embodies our interest in Edith as both an author and a woman. Jean conveys a sparkling devotion that keeps Posy a force, whether she’s rummaging under the bed for freshly written pages or piping out an observation in a worldly-wise Irish accent.
Edith has no one to confess to and no one from whom to hide her indiscretions, so her inner life leaks out only when the affair wanes and predictable heartbreak emerges. Caswell conveys it well, but the script never makes Edith’s vulnerability specific to her age or character. Ultimately, the play’s sexual tension isn’t hot enough to thrill, nor is it biographically deep enough to reveal much about Edith.
The production’s virtue is its playfulness, from Posy’s confessions to scene changes that convert emotion into gesture. The overlay of cool modern sensibilities on early 20th-century manners gives Wharton Between the Sheets a heady feel, as Edith and Morton crane across a century for a kiss, occupying both worlds.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Never Too Late | Theater review: Wharton Between the Sheets, Middlebury Acting Company”
This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.
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