There’s a feeling that British actress Clare Perkins gets when she reads an intriguing role, a “fire” of sorts that makes her want to take part. So when she learned of the character Alvita, the leading lady of author and essayist Zadie Smith’s book and first play, “The Wife of Willesden,” which the American Repertory Theater is presenting Feb. 25-March 17, Perkins knew it would be “a good character to bring to the stage.”
Alvita, a Jamaican woman in her mid-50s, is Smith’s adaptation of Alison, the “Wife of Bath” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” And though Chaucer’s Alison, a European woman who talked of her desires and multiple husbands, and Smith’s Alvita appear to be quite different at first glance, “the spirit is the same,” Smith writes in the book’s introduction. Read more