The Great Society
Jeannie Flannery, wife of a Chicago ward committeeman, seeks to claim her rightful place in the Kennedy clan–she may be a cousin of Joan, whom her husband derides as married to “the Zeppo of the Kennedys.” Young Father Mike eagerly awaits the opportunity to take over the parish from his dying superior, and Jeannie’s sister-in-law, Anne Marie, aims at financial security through a scheme involving carnival rides with a space-program theme. Those who don’t seek greatness have greatness thrust upon them: hapless precinct captain Dennis, Anne Marie’s husband, faces being reshaped as a captain of carnival industry by his wife, while John Flannery endures Jeannie’s efforts to secure him a classy job in Washington. Only Ed Talley, who sets the action in motion by threatening to out John Flannery as someone who hears voices from religious statues, tries to keep things as they are. He’s just hoping to hang on to the chair concession at the parish Christmas festival and isn’t above using blackmail to do so.
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The play conveys nothing about politics and not much about social evolution. The playwrights’ sole attempt to be “relevant”–a reference to Jeannie reading The Feminine Mystique–falls flat because it’s so out of character. Coming in the final scene, it seems less about the world of the play than about the playwrights: having noticed that they’d written something with active women and passive men, they belatedly tried to account for it.
