You can see “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight” at the Wilbury Theatre in Providence now through June 11.
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian painter from the Baroque era, who depicted biblical and mythological scenes in the early 1600s with dramatic highlights and shadows, in the style of Caravaggio. She was the daughter of the painter Orazio Gentileschi and she trained in her father’s studio, which was very unusual for the time. Darcie Dennigan wrote the book and lyrics for the play.
“Well, I think what’s really interesting about her, aside from her incredible talent, is she chose to paint a lot of familiar scenes that other painters from the period are doing,” Dennigan said. “But in her versions, she really kind of changed the narrative, and often made it from the women’s perspective.”
Gentileschi painted a striking depiction of “Judith Slaying Holofernes” that was pretty different from how male artists painted the scene. That piece was one of Dennigan’s inspirations for writing “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight,” an original musical now making its world premiere at the Wilbury Theater.
“There’s lots of famous versions, but they often show the women kind of like, really beautiful, or turned away from the violence, or just like with one delicate finger on him,” Dennigan said. “And I was kind of just blown over and a little bit shocked and kind of like, wait, you get to do this. This painting has these women just sort of like straddling Holofernes and and carving his head off, and they’re just like deep in it, like super muscular and they’re both just doing it. And, you know, they’re not squeamish about it. They’re not enjoying it, either. They’re just like, this is what needs to be done.”
There are many interesting details to Gentileschi’s life as a female painter in a male-dominated world, but this musical is not a biography.
“We’re actually not telling her life story. We’re telling the story of some of her major paintings,” Dennigan said. “So the songs aren’t biographical, but they’re kind of enacting the paintings. We’re also telling the story of three other really interesting women who are her contemporaries.”
The four women together make up a 60s-style girl group like The Ronettes or The Shirelles, and many of the songs were inspired by those groups. Niki Healy wrote the music for “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight.”
“First of all, a lot of the women in these girl groups – I mean, they weren’t even women. They were young girls. They were 16, 17 years old, a lot of them being managed by these older, domineering men,” Healy said. “And they had to put on this facade. They had this big hair, they had this cheery demeanor, they had these constrained little movements that they would do. And they were just sort of the quintessential ‘good girl.’”
Jennifer Mischley plays Artemisia as the leader of the group. She starts the play with a bright smile on her face – the “good girl.” Throughout the play, the women are subjected to all sorts of attacks and misogyny, and through it all, Jennifer Mischley keeps that smile on her face. But it’s strained by the end – it’s a grimace. It’s a great performance.
“And then we also have a fifth female character, Mary Gerard, who’s like an art historian who’s talking about the paintings in the context and giving a very fun, light hearted, angry spin on it,” Healy said.
The play is performed on three different circular platforms arranged between two seating areas for the audience. It looks a little like the stage of the Ed Sullivan Show. The women sing the stories from the platforms while a men’s chorus observes them from the floor, interacting throughout the play in ways that represent the contrasting perspectives of men and women in Gentileschi’s work. By the end, the music changes – the bright, cheery girl group harmony is replaced by 90s feminist punk and grunge rock along the lines of PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill or Sleater-Kinney.
I really enjoyed the show – and if you like the idea of going to a multi-media art history lecture punctuated with catchy songs, you might like it, too.
You can see “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight” at the Wilbury Theater in Providence now through June 11.
