An interview with Norma Bowen and Jeremy Tow the playwright/adaptors of A Perfect Wife.

Q. This is the first time that the two of you have worked together adapting a script: What inspired your collaboration?

Norma:
I brought the short story by Trevanian to Jeremy. He loved it. The Trevanian estate said yes…and we took off like a house on fire.

Q. So this is a “new” classic?

Jeremy:
Yes. Our goal was to create a brand new play from several rarely performed classic pieces…plus the Trevanian. What excited us was that they all share similar themes, powerful woman (Jeremy glances sideways at Norma) and delightfully complex men (Norma coughs in Jeremy’s direction). So it was a natural to bring them together and create the hilarious stories of four women from the same family… falling in love…spanning the globe and the generations.

Q. Describe the process of the adaptation.

Jeremy:
Well, after we received permission from the Trevanian estate, I approached Marek Czuma to create new translations for us of the Chekhov pieces. These were literal…from the Russian directly into English. Then he kindly gave us permission to start crafting our own play…and to alter his words.

Norma:
I initially adapted the Trevanian piece from the short story to a play form. It was easy, since so much of the dialogue was intact. Then, Jeremy handed me the Chekhov piece that we moved to Saskatchewan in the 1950s. I enlisted the help of my in-laws and out laws (all transplanted prairie folk) to help us make these characters sound authentic…Canadian, eh?

Jeremy:
I found ways of weaving the stories together by slightly altering the personal histories of characters, and finding humourous words, turns of phrase, and personality quirks that this great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter might share.

Q. How much of the original text was altered?

Norma:
Quite a bit of the internal text of the Chekhov pieces have been cut…and there are significant changes to the last act of the play, since we moved the piece from 1870s Russia to 1950s Saskatchewan. But the heart of the stories and the language and characters that he created are absolutely there. The Trevanian and the Shaw are only slightly altered…but significantly edited to bring them within a reasonable playing time. Jeremy: Yes. Russians must have had ears that loved repetition and bums that were made for sitting…for very long periods of time.

Q. Last question. Why are you passionate about this project?

Jeremy:
Words, words, words: brilliant and funny ones!

Norma:
Witty dialogue and physical comedy…and chance to do Chekhov, Shaw and Trevanian all in one night? Need I say more?!