A Damn Fine Espresso: March 2025

What do our baristas do when they’re not podcasting or writing blog posts about Korean series, animated favourites, or their addiction to the Criterion Collection? In Sam’s case, he teaches at a Swiss grammar school – and he regularly stages plays at the school where he teaches. This spring, he directed a production of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1930s Broadway play The Women, which was famously turned into a 1939 film by George Cukor, and rather less famously a remake in 2008, starring Meg Ryan and Annette Benning. Join Sam and Julie as they talk about the play and the production. How does a play that is almost 90 years old hold up when staged in 2025? How does a Broadway comedy of manners work when performed by students in a Swiss town? Does The Women in a staging that keeps its 1930s context speak to modern audiences? And, perhaps most importantly: if he had the opportunity, who would Sam himself portray in this all-women play?

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The Rear-View Mirror: The Divorcee (1930)

Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

The Divorcee begins with a group of friends which make up the in-crowd of New York society. Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) are in love. They decide to get married. Paul (Conrad Nagel), who also loves Jerry, is firmly relegated to the friend zone. Gutted, he proceeds to get drunk and gets into a car accident that disfigures one of the other women of the group: Dot (Judith Wood). Ur-‘Nice Guy’ that he is, he marries her out of pity. Wedding bells and domesticity, sacrifice and unrequited love. So far, so Hollywood. Female facepalm. But then halfway Shearer delivers the following searing monologue:

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