Sharon Sharth, a veteran stage and film actress, has put her own life on stage in Waiting for Grace, the new comedy now in a world-premiere run at the Odyssey Theatre. Sharth, who also plays the lead role in the production, decided her relationships with men were fit material for a play, one that would tackle the sexual politics of the day in a bold, personal way. As directed by Lee Costello, Waiting for Grace turns out to be a relationship drama on steroids, one that kicks off with Sharth (fictionalized as Grace) asking herself, in her mid-forties, why she wasn’t married. She’d had lots of boyfriends in past years, known some success in the business world, and was smart, funny and warm-hearted–but here she was, alone at night, listening to the loud ticking of the biological clock. Career had come first, much to the dismay of her conventional, pushy mother (Pamela Dunlap), who believed a girl should marry at eighteen. But Grace, a child of the feminist 60s, had treasured her independence and freedom, insisting she didn’t need a husband to make her whole. Now she felt a change coming over her, a need to blend her life with another. So she sets about finding Mister Right, only to learn that the road to the altar is a rocky, perilous one. In Act One, Grace goes through seven different men (mostly played by Jeff LeBeau) in a series of quick, satirical scenes in which the male fear of commitment is pilloried. Complicating things are Grace’s own failings as a woman: she is a neurotic, self-doubting, and motor-mouthed, a real mess. On top of that, she turns to the wrong people for help and guidance: her cynical mother and a ditzy, New Age friend (Lily Knight). The resulting chaos is quite funny at times, painfully sad as well. In Act Two, Grace finds David (Todd Babcock), who seems to be a prince after all those frogs, but he, too, turns out to have emotional issues, most of them stemming from their decision to try and have a baby. Problem is, Grace has waited too long to become a mother; she simply can’t conceive, and he blames her for it. Poor Grace goes through emotional hell after that: enduring egg implants and sperm injections in her quest to get pregnant. The comedy in Waiting for Grace is always tempered with a touch of tragedy, but fortunately, things turn out well and end in a Hollywood clinch.
