Jennifer Coolidge is hilarious she delivers the lines so perfectly

Kristen Johnston and Jennifer Coolidge stole the show lol they were hilarious! Great production

We are currently working on this production for my local theater company. This was EXTREMELY helpful in my research for my role as Olga 😊and I truly enjoyed seeing so many of my favorite female performers on one stage. It was great to see Ms. Rue MaClanahan 🙏🏾🕊she was truly a talented woman.

I was able to see this in NYC - and the set design was spectacular! What a rare treasure to have all these amazing women on stage together.

Absolutely Fantastic. The original film was outstanding. This play and cast are FABULOUS.

AMY RYAN!!! Loved seeing her in this! 💚

"Why didn't you confide in me????" This was excellent.

Kristen Johnson is FANTASTIC!

Great to see this. Thank you for posting.

I surely enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you so much for sharing this 🙏🏼

I had this recorded on VHS it was sooooo good, I wish they would release it streaming somewhere!

Clare booth Luce, rage for fame, excellent read. Her life was inspiring. She set a standard for women of the time, had a real zeal

Brilliant cast.

Ehhhhhh love Cynthia Nixon but she’s no Mary Haines. her voice for this part is wrong, doesn’t show the sweetness of Mary. Kristen did a better job but she is no Rosalind Russell. See the movie. It’s perfection.

1:07:43 =I relate to Little Mary... That feeling that you have to remain non-challant & calm and yet you want nothing more but to scream, cry, throw a fit and be angry...

I would love to have had a woman introduce this play.

Didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did

The Golden Girls finally meet Sex and the City. Miranda still getting cheated on and Blanche still being the cougar. :)

have always loved this. thank you!!!

Awww, they missed my favorite line. Its back to the perfume counter for me. And by the way ladies, there's a word for you in high society but its not mentioned outside of a Kennel.

I missed "I've had 2 years to grow claws, Mother - JUNGLE RED!"

Brilliant play!

4:18 omg it's Heather Matarazzo ❤ (Solondz's Dawn Wiener)💕

1:26:44 “Oh. That’s an ash.” Jennifer Coolidge seriously has the best comedic timing. 😂😂😂

Just for fun, I looked at the cast list of the original 1936 Broadway production to see if anyone made it into the film. Two actresses got to recreate their characters in the 1939 film: Phyllis Povah as Edith Potter and Marjorie Main as Lucy. I was also reminded of something I've noticed before, that Arlene Francis (one of the main panelists from WHAT'S MY LINE, the popular television game show) was in the Broadway production. She played Princess Tamara (who is the model at the fashion show that Sylvia gets into a tangle with) and she also is credited as playing "Helene." There is no Helene in the film, but there is a Helen - the maid in the scene that takes place in Crystal's bathroom (with Sylvia), so I assume that's the role (makes sense, one small role in each act). Hilarious. (There is also a woman named Doris Day in the Broadway cast listed as "saleslady," but I see that THE Doris Day would have been 14 years old at the time. Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.)

Fun, Fun, fun...fabulous cast.

Heather Matarazzo!!! My gurl!! It's nice to see her onstage.

Wow I would’ve loved to see this

they’re all brilliant. but jennifer tilly is what makes me come back.

I recorded this on VHS. I wore out the tape! Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant!

good production - but the 1939 movie is the best

4:25 =Why is that actress (the maid) so familiar????? NO WAY!!! MIA'S BFF IN THE PRINCESS DIARIES!!!

Nixon is just darling as always.

The great, GREAT Mary Louise Wilson.

Better than the movie remake with Meg Ryan 2008 this is so campy and funny great casting actor's members this play, Jennifer Tilly is everything bath scenes reminded me of bride of chucky death scene..

Somebody help me stop watching this. So hooked.

4:18 oh my gosh it’s Lilly Moscovitz

Perfection ❤️

I've seen the 30's film with Norma Sheared and Crawford. Cynthia Nixon of course brings her own style to Mrs Thalbergs role ... enjoying it more as I appreciated the difference between the women.

Thank you!

Delicious. Thank you

Give me the movie!

It’s finally up 🥺😭💕

Kirsten Johnson doing her best Rosalind Russell.

THIS IS THE BEST!

Crystal was written to be a clever imposter who conceals her low class staus. That's why she is a fierce competitor for Mary to brinf to justice.

The fitness instructor is likely smoking a brand of cigarette recommended by her family physician...

Fascinating the play differs greatly 👌🏾🦹🏾‍♂️😍🏳️‍🌈🌷stunning cast

Jennifer Coolidge is the best.

Very enjoyable to watch. A great story.

Such an excellent production. I saw it during its run on Broadway. Recorded this on DVR when it was broadcast, but the drive took a dump before I could rip it to the computer. Unfortunately, Roundabout never made it available for watching again or purchase. Of course PBS viewers didn't get the full view of Jennifer Tilly in the bathroom scene...

Omg. The one playing Sylvia sounds like Beverly LaSalle.

This is not to be critical of anyone posting here (speak your mind - you do you - etc.) ... but, I realize we all have busy lives and/or things we want to do beyond getting involved in long discussions online. Therefore, many comments are just "I loved it" or "it sucked" or "this is the best" or "this was just dreadful" - again, speak your truth, but I thought it would be helpful (for anyone interested) to read a professional review from when the show opened. It was published in VARIETY in November of 2001 and it's written by Charles Isherwood (who subsequently reviewed theatre for the NEW YORK TIMES). He doesn't have much praise for the production or the cast, but at least this gives us more to think about vs. "I'm Team No" and "I'm Team Yes" FOR THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE THE TIME OR INCLINATION, HERE IS A SHORTER VERSION WHERE I'VE PULLED THE REVIEWERS MORE MAJOR COMPLAINTS (leaving out his reviews of individual performances), below that I’ve put the full version with NO edits. ************************************************************************* THIS IS THE EDITED VERSION: ... An air of aimlessness perfumes Elliott’s production. It sets in early, as Derek McLane’s pink, rose-covered curtain rises to reveal the all-female cast in careful poses. They walk to the lip of the stage, smirk a bit and recede; the point remains elusive, as does that of a misguided curtain call requiring the entire cast to appear - many looking distinctly uncomfortable, and who can blame them? - in fancy period lingerie. The last-minute revelation of the characters’ sartorial underpinnings only points up the fact that the production hasn’t done much to expose their psychological ones. That’s a pity, because even through the hollow chatter of this mindless production you can sense a lot going on beneath the galloping wit of Luce’s dialogue. With its formulaic plot and sketchy characters, “The Women” isn’t a masterwork, by any means, but it remains compelling because it has a molten core of anger that still glows hot. An inquisitive director with a taste for exploring the play’s dark undercurrents of protest could bring them to the fore without discomposing the play’s glittering comic surfaces (paging Joe Mantello), but Elliott’s production ignores them in favor of securing as much easy laughter as possible. ************************************************************************* THIS IS THE FULL REVIEW: November 8. 2001 The Women The hats and heels nearly walk off with the show in the Roundabout Theater Co.'s pretty, pink and pointless revival of Clare Boothe Luce's cat-clawed comedy "The Women." By Charles Isherwood The production does boast one notable asset that the movie doesn’t: a real actress in the central role of Mrs. Stephen Haines, played onscreen by that plaster vessel of noble suffering, Norma Shearer. Cynthia Nixon’s multifaceted and honestly felt performance as the wronged wife is the production’s lone revelation, and it’s a considerable one. For the most part, however, an air of aimlessness perfumes Elliott’s production. It sets in early, as Derek McLane’s pink, rose-covered curtain rises to reveal the all-female cast in careful poses. They walk to the lip of the stage, smirk a bit and recede; the point remains elusive, as does that of a misguided curtain call requiring the entire cast to appear - many looking distinctly uncomfortable, and who can blame them? - in fancy period lingerie. The last-minute revelation of the characters’ sartorial underpinnings only points up the fact that the production hasn’t done much to expose their psychological ones. That’s a pity, because even through the hollow chatter of this mindless production you can sense a lot going on beneath the galloping wit of Luce’s dialogue. With its formulaic plot and sketchy characters, “The Women” isn’t a masterwork, by any means, but it remains compelling because it has a molten core of anger that still glows hot. Superficially, the play seems to be a vivisection of women’s vanity and venomousness: Mary Haines and her circle of plushly married girlfriends play bridge and gossip, have their hair and nails done and gossip, have babies and gossip, get divorces and gossip. But Luce’s accusatory finger - with its famously “jungle red” nail polish - isn’t actually pointed at the figures onstage. The play is really a seething indictment of the permanent state of powerlessness the female sex was reduced to by American society (which is to say, American men). The self-absorption and friendly betrayals so amusingly paraded across the stage are just the symptoms, not the disease. The play was written in 1936, when the ambitions and competitive instincts of men could find an acceptable social outlet in business, but women were still locked out of that sphere of play (their segregation is tellingly symbolized by the lack of a single male presence onstage). Women could only compete for the attentions of men, and could only prove their value by asserting their attractiveness to the opposite sex. As a result, their energies were turned against themselves and each other, with nasty - if amusing - results. (The only morally cultivated woman onstage, it’s not so subtly suggested, is the mannish author Nancy Blake, played by a miscast Lisa Emery. She scorns the women’s world and has no place in the men’s either; off she goes to Africa …) An inquisitive director with a taste for exploring the play’s dark undercurrents of protest could bring them to the fore without discomposing the play’s glittering comic surfaces (paging Joe Mantello), but Elliott’s production ignores them in favor of securing as much easy laughter as possible. The cigarettes constantly dangling from the ladies’ lips might be a hint that he’s aware of the self-destructiveness that Luce suggests their predicament engendered, but then again it might just be a period-appropriate stylistic tic; the rest of the production offers few clues. The performance of Jennifer Tilly in the role of Crystal Allen, the hard-bitten shopgirl who steals Mary’s husband, is a case in point. Luce’s play has some things to say about class divides as well as sexual ones, and the role of Crystal offers a chance to explore the fear and desperation that powered women of the underclass into the higher echelons of society. But Tilly’s braying Crystal is a banal portrait of a platinum-blond mantrap from the wrong side of the tracks, nothing more. Most of the rest of Elliott’s cast of name-brand performers don’t bring out the subtexts of Luce’s writing, either, although they do full justice to Mizrahi’s eye-filling parade of beautifully realized costumes. Kristen Johnston does a hilarious riff on Rosalind Russell’s backstabbing Sylvia Fowler, and gets to wear some of Isaac Mizrahi’s riotous headgear to boot. But there are only a few glimmers of depth in the performance - chiefly a frozen look of pain followed by one of determination that play across Sylvia’s face when she decides to unveil to Mary her husband’s infidelity. Jennifer Coolidge, as the serially pregnant Mrs. Phelps Potter, gets laughs with her oddly childish manner and rubber-raft lips, but her approach is happily cartoonish. Heather Matarazzo (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”) and Rue McClanahan (endless TV) are simply unpersuasive in their smaller roles. Nixon’s sensitive performance as Mary thus stands out starkly, a rose among thorns, to borrow McLane’s floral imagery. When Mary discovers her husband’s affair, Nixon clarifies all the turbulent emotions that flutter in her heart: sadness and betrayal, shame and injured pride and, above all, a kind of luminous loneliness that infuses all her scenes. Only she and the tough but tender Mary Louise Wilson as her mother bring a full humanity to their characters. (Amy Ryan at least tries, but her role is tiny.) And Nixon’s presence adds extra dimensions to our interpretation of the play, thanks to this longtime stage vet’s new prominence on TV’s “Sex and the City,” which can almost be seen as the late 20th century’s tart riposte to Luce’s play (and Cukor’s picture). Even in their cozy nests of communal femininity - the beauty parlor, the dressing room - the women of “The Women” were utterly isolated; the social and sexual orders pitted them against each other. The girls on “Sex and the City” may spend as much time shopping for shoes and getting waxed, but their sense of community is deep and true. Those jungle-red claws come in handy in the office, but they’re delicately sheathed over brunch. This and other observations ignited by Nixon’s performance offer food for thought that the rest of this calorie-free production never does. Hey

Rue was perfectly cast

Well, that was good. Everyone was perfect. I loved Tilly as Crystal. That was a good call. She fit right in. I didn't recognize Nixon till 30 minutes in.

Fuck the haters, fuck the critics this production is AWESOME!!!

The original movie version this title is one of my favorite movies. This presentation can’t touch it. I’m not sure who did the worst job of acting…Cynthia Nixon or the little girl who played her daughter. Jennifer Coolidge somewhat redeemed this play …she was right on point. I hate that the dialogue was changed so much. Sorry, but compared to the movie, this play was just mediocre.

Major miscast Cynthia Nixon amidst otherwise excellent cast.

by Clare Boothe

Holly from the Office plays Peggy

I thought the whole face mud scene was unnecessary.

Awesome cast, better than the movie version! Fabulous production! Thank you!

The mother of Boys in the Band! Was this classic! Lol😂

Kristen Johnston and Jennifer Coolidge are even better than the gals in the movie.

BRILLIANT! REVIEAL! 🤗!

Why are we yelling???

3:19 scene 1 17:20 scene 2 25:26 scene 3

Seriously, saw this and left early.

Jennifer Tilly was an inspired choice for the Joan Crawford character

Ok that was great but why did they do bows in lingerie Especially since the cast includes a literal child

Sacrilege. Nobody can replace Shearer and Crawford. Anything seems parochial

Those fabulous stars from the 30s.must be rolling their eyes.and gasping!!!....what is with that wierd accent Nixon is using.....theyre all just YELLING and hoping to be funny......ohhhhhh poor George Cukor...WHERE ARE YOU......

Nothing like a good cat fight, yall

1:28:44 =yeah... she's right... You can't whine when you haven't experience the worst yet...

Adina Porter!

Always LOVED the movie. Now love the play .. This WONDERFUL bunch of VERY talented women. Thought Cynthia Nixon's accent.. a bit odd ... Nevertheless .. she was GREAT!

I can see why they cast this with these women. Though in practice I found it spotty and often misguided. For me, Jennifer Coolidge stole the whole thing. Her line delivery elevated the writing where the others fairly just shouted them. Too much screaching not enough delicious womanly shade. Curtaincall in underwear didn't seem a good idea after all as the characters were largely lost without costume and hair.

In the actual stage play, Jennifer Tilly reveals full frontal nudity to the audience when she stands up in the bathtub. But for this broadcast on PBS, producers decided to angle the camera so that it only showed her bare back because some local stations in more conservative markets wouldn’t have aired it with the nudity.

I love her nauseating voice ........ the villain !

Clearly Isaac Mizrahi has done an AMAZING job with the clothing design except with Rue McClanahan and her awful mini-dress, tacky as hell, and more suitable for the "Monster´s Parade" than for a countess. Sounds like a private revenge against Rue who, I´ve been told, was not pleased with the horrendous garment she had to wear. Then, Jennifer Tilly is not fit for the role of Crystal. She sounds like the stereotypicall dumb blonde. I miss Joan Crawford and her magistral acting in the 1939 movie, on which she portrays a somehow sophisticated, wordly and very smart gold digger. I must say that, although the play sounds so dated nowadays, I liked it and have fun despite its portrayal of a women´s world that, thankfully, no longer exists.

No matter how many women are on stage - the play does not favor them. Their lives spin around relations with men, they behave and look miserable. It is not so nowadays, and I beleive was not so 100 years ago

Cynthia Nixon’s accent was distracting.

3:12 3:50 17:19 25:24 36:15 47:29 54:48 58:25 1:09:28 1:25:20 1:31:19 1:49:17 1:58:24 2:10:55

Anything The Women is great. I dislike jennifer tilly as crystal though

It's interesting to see how much of a full scaled re-write the movie is and what they had to edit and censor to get it on the screen. Having been brought up on the movie there are things I missed, but I find it interesting how much they have to make the material sincere and sentimental in the film. The play is clearly much harsher and more cynical. This performance unfortunately makes the play seem more dated than it is, very very self conscious and stilted line deliveries and extremely broad characterizations.

@1:26:42 that's an ash. 😂😂😂

It’s a period piece and I’m not making a pun. It was made today and it’s called Euphoria. It’s just less literate.😅

Fine production. Unfortunately the role Mary, the deceived wife, does not capture my empathy. She is quite devoid of portraying a woman in love. Therefore the play becomes superficial.

31:40 =Sometimes, I can't help but think being a traditional woman is sad... Unless you know that your heart is strong to not care what your husband thinks and still give the world to your children, that world is frightful & scary... I'd rather be a woman like Nancy, independent & strong, not needing a man & would rather get rid of him if he ever appears...

Somebody tell me which part of the video Has the most famous line “THERES A NAME FOR YOU LADIES BUT IT’S NOT USED IN HIGH SOCIETY OUTSIDE A KENNEL”

26:03 =Odd.. I am reminded of SuperNanny...

Cynthia Nixon acts as if she is in a fog or quaaludes!

This production worked fine in person. But it didn't come off at all in this taped version. Guess you had to be there. Jennifer Tilley appearing nude, standing in the tub, was my only complaint, as it was completely unnecessary.

Did Heather Matarazzo walk out for her curtain call with no bra on????

Glad to have seen this but Jennifer Tilly is just plain awful and Cynthia Nixon's accent is all over the place.

I cringe watching this. I’ll stick to the original. It had humor. This just comes off like a pale imitation and somewhat mean spirited.

Jesus, this sucks. Calling Norma, Joan, Rosalind, et all...

Isaac Mizrahi is no Adrian.

Stick with the original version and enjoy a great cast in acting with the light touch this story requires