Theater Review: NJ Rep’s latest play offers a swimmingly good time

By Madeline Schulman
Swimming at the Ritz is delightful, and that also describes the actors, Judith Hawking and Christopher Daftsisos.

Judith Hawking and Christopher Daftsisos tell the story of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harrison in “Swimming At The Ritz.” (SuzAnne Barabas photo)

Hawking is Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harrison, whose three husbands and numerous lovers form a Who’s Who of twentieth century history, commerce and politics. We meet Pamela in 1995 as American Ambassador to France, surrounded by luxury goods in her courtesy suite at the Paris Ritz. She is waiting for appraisers from Christie’s auction house so she can raise money to settle a $40 million lawsuit from her stepchildren by Averell Harriman, her third husband. Somehow she has gone through $115 million dollars in ten years.

The first thing she tells us is that Pamela learned to swim at 9 years old, when her Scottish swimming instructor threw her into the Firth of Forth to sink or swim. Pamela has been keeping herself afloat ever since.

The playwright, Charles Leipart has brilliantly solved the problem of the fourth wall by kicking it down. Pamela is not just addressing the furniture in the elegant hotel suite created by Jessica Parks. She is also addressing the audience – not just addressing, but flirting and interacting with it.
Pamela has another audience in her valet, Pietro (Daftsios), who is also her friend and confidante (but emphatically not her lover or boy toy, as she has no interest in younger men), and who helps her act out her meetings and partings with wealthy men such as Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune and Baron Eli Rothschild.

Judith Hawking’s performance is so versatile that even without Daftsios’ aid she brings to life Randolph Churchill’s booze-soaked proposal (he was her first husband), Brooke Hayward’s horrified whine, “But Daddy, one doesn’t marry Pam Churchill!” (Leland Hayward was `her second husband), Pamela’s lapse into Italian-accented English during her tenure as Agnelli’s mistress, and many other vignettes.

Her vivid scarlet lips and ever-changing voice animate a stage full of characters — ably directed by SuzAnne Barabas — as Pamela and Pietro dance and drink champagne in celebration of an extraordinary life.

Besides being wonderful entertainment, Swimming at the Ritz is hugely informative about the life of a woman who fought the narrow roles prescribed for her as a wife and mother to become famous not only for her sexual adventures but for her political force. You leave the theater both exhilarated and educated.

Swimming At the Ritz runs through Feb. 1 at NJ Rep, 17 Broadway, Long Branch. Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m; Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets and information, call 732-229-3166 or visit www.njrep.org.