Theatre Review: This American Wife Delves Into The Real Housewives Cult

Written and directed by Patrick Foley and Michael Breslin, This American Wife is incredibly funny and uncomfortable. When two friends, Patrick and Michael, meet and share their mutual fascination with the housewives, you are thrown into a vortex of petty, petulant, and spot-on reenactments of some rich women with poor attitudes. For 80 minutes, you laugh and wonder, is it right to like something so wrong?

There is no doubt the Real Housewives series is filled with meanness and obliviousness to the needs and worries of 99% of the human population. Yet, maybe, that is where its “relief” lies? If I could go a whole year where the worst thing to happen to me was that I did not get a drawn heart-shape in my dinner invitation, I would be winning. It is that kind of mind-frame, where the worst thing to happen to you is nothing compared to what happens to others, that makes you laugh at Foley and Breslin. Their “characters” embody the privileged self-pitying of people who cannot shake that money doesn’t take away suffering, but also cannot fully witness how easy it makes it to bear.  

As you enter the New York Theatre Workshop, you are bombarded by the “Dinner From Hell” episode of Beverly Hills. From then on, the scene is set: things are going to get loud, silly, and invasive. Both Foley and Breslin spend the first twenty minutes of the show marveling at their obsession with The Housewives. Then, they proceed to do some crazy, but accurate imitations of the Housewives greatest fights. Still, their choices of lines to repeat make you laugh and cry. There is a darkness to this series that you might miss because it really does lavish you with  images of luxe-life. Yet, when you are in a bare, white room with a few recording cameras and two guys, suddenly, you hear what you have been watching. 

In between their manic interpretations of the Housewives cult, Foley and Breslin reveal tidbits of their life that get ultra personal. Yet, if you are going to summon the confessional ambiance of this series, it seems only right to emulate it with yourself. Having them open up about their lives, causes everyone to wonder when Foley and Breslin are in their “characters”: Patrick and Michael. The blurring between reality allows you to dissect the play like it is a huge platter of Brechtian methods, of which to deconstruct a scene is to pick out the pieces of social/ human behavior.

I loved This American Wife. I laughed, I cringed, and admired the creativity of Patrick Foley and Michael Breslin. This show is everything you would not expect from a play based on The Real Housewives because it is way more thoughtful. It is not trying to be gimmicky as much as genuinely funny and open to analysis. Yet, if you have never watched The Real Housewives or do not know too much about the series, This American Wife might fall flat to you. Michael and Patrick go for the inside jokes of this series, and even hidden secrets about how it came to be. Thus, get ready for some serious Housewife fun and psychology when you go see This American Wife at The New York Theatre Workshop: located at 79 East 4th St. (btwn Bowery & 2nd Ave.) The show plays until August 11 Click Here To Buy Tickets.