In the 1970s, when “The Stepford Wives” skewered banal suburban life, many people realized that “Stepford” was a not-so-subtle stand-in for Westport.
Heck, much of the movie was filmed here.
Westport life is now the subject of an Off-Broadway play — and there’s no alias. “You’ve Got Hate Mail” is running on Fridays at the Triad on the Upper West Side.
And we’re a hit. The comedy — about a Westport couple whose marriage unravels, thanks to the Internet and cell phones — has been extended through the summer.
The show is an updated version of “Love Letters,” A.R. Gurney’s evocative look — through thoughtful, lovely writing — of a 50-year love affair.
The modern world movesmuchmorequickly. We dash off emails without thinking (or punctuating). We hit “send” without double-checking the “to” line.
And we read them just as distractedly.
Though co-writer Jane Milmore — who also plays the lead role of “hapless Westport wife Stephanie” — lives in New Jersey, she told the Connecticut Post that she “knows Fairfield County women with husbands who spend the day working in Manhattan.”
Milmore said that many of the characters — and emails — in the play are drawn from real life.
Uh oh.
Milmore is fascinated by the way many users of the Internet drift into relationships they wouldn’t start up in the “real world” and how they never seem to pause to think through what they are doing online.
Hook-ups can happen in the city faster than ever on office computers or PDAs and yet a tech-savvy wife can investigate what hubby is up to in ways that were denied to commuter wives 20 or 30 years ago.
Twenty or 30 years ago, Westport was defined by “Stepford Wives.” Before that, it was “The Swimmer”; earlier still, “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”
I would say something clever in response, but I’m late for a key party.
