by AMY BARRATT

Although I risk being accused of silencing women’s voices, I’ll say it anyway: 17 women are too many. Carolyn Guillet’s new play Seventeen (Anonymous) Women, which recently opened infinitheatre’s season at the Bain St-Michel, tries to do too much and runs too long.

It’s as if two plays are going on simultaneously—one inhabited by contemporary women with specific, personal tales to tell, the other featuring historical characters who speak in strange syntax and are less than convincing. I wish that Guillet had trusted her own voice and not felt the need to put the contemporary stories into the context of “herstory.”

It’s not that there’s nothing of value in the historical monologues—The Lady Who Would Be King is quite impressive on its own—but as it stands, the text is too sprawling and unwieldy. Guillet would have a different, but much tighter play if she focused on the contemporary stories of troubled teens and desperate housewives. Even with the contemporary stories, a tendency to have characters talk about themselves in the third person needs to be used sparingly.

Most of the monologues are acted with conviction and even inspiration by a cast of seven women. On opening night they occasionally sped through their lines and several of them seemed to breathe in the oddest places—or maybe it’s Guillet’s lines that breathe strangely.

Adrianne Richards had two smokin’ monologues in the first act. Djennie Laguerre displayed her versatility with a contemporary character who can’t sit still and a historical one who can barely move. Michelle Girouard is a wonderfully physical actress who I would love to see more of in roles where she didn’t have to spout gibberish like, “Born heart too big size,” and, “Throat apple his I want.”

Felicia Shulman commands our attention in the disturbing but darkly funny “Latrine Survival” (all of the monologues have titles like this because the women, obviously, don’t have names). Alexandria Haber is delightful in “Dumpy Housewife Wails.” Jane Gilchrist and Renée Le Guerrier, though sometimes burdened by stories that go nowhere and passages that are overwritten, nevertheless have some warmly comic moments.

The monologues are beautifully directed by Diana Fajrajsl. Dominique Richard’s inspired costumes are much more than clothing—one woman carries her house on her back, another wears an Elizabethan dress that fills the whole stage. I have never seen the Bain St-Michel look so much like the swimming pool it once was. I’m sure there’s a metaphor lurking here about the pool of common female experience or the pool of the subconscious.

Given the hard folding chairs the audience has to sit on, two and a half hours (including intermission) is just too long. Spectators are too likely to take one of the characters’ advice, “If your bum starts hurting, get up and start walking.”

Condos and chums

Also Playing: David Fennario’s Condoville opens tonight at the Centaur. Tomorrow night, Oct. 7, the Other Theatre’s Galapagos begins an eight-day run in the second Centaur space. Adapted from the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos is the first production in Centaur’s Brave New Works Initiative.

Meanwhile, Q Art Theatre’s My Dear Friends plays at the MAI, in the context of La Semaine Québécoise des rencontres interculturelles. Actress Bobo Vian adapts and performs the work of 20th century Hungarian poet Attila József in French and English. Oct. 6–8, 8 p.m.; Oct. 9 at 2 p.m., 982-3386.

Seventeen (Anonymous) Women, to Oct. 16 at Bain St-Michel (5300 St-Dominique), 987-1774

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