Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a play written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman. It is organized as a series of monologues and uses a rotating cast of five principal women. The subject matter of the monologues includes women's relationships and wardrobes and at times the interaction of the two, using the female wardrobe as a time capsule of a woman's life.
The show was initially presented as a part of the 2008 summer series at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, and then as a benefit series at the DR2 Theatre in New York in early 2009. Later the same year, the show was produced Off-Broadway as an ongoing commercial theatrical production at the Westside Theatre in New York, where it became the second-longest running show in the theatre's history. The production and its cast received positive critical attention. The production won the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience as well as the 2010 Broadway.com Audience Award for Favorite New Off-Broadway Play.
The show has been produced on six continents and more than eight countries. It began a national tour in the United States in September 2011 in Chicago. It played an encore performance in Paris in January 2012.
Background and development
Nora Ephron was a writer, director and producer best known for writing the screenplays of romantic comedy films. She received three Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay, for Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).
She wrote five best-selling books and the 2002 play Imaginary Friends, which fictionalized the antagonistic relationship between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. Ephron sometimes co-authored screenplays with her sister, writer-producer Delia Ephron, including You've Got Mail (1998), Hanging Up (2000), and Bewitched (2005).
Nora Ephron wrote the introduction to Beckerman's eponymous 1995 book, which she immediately thought had dramatic possibilities. She identified with the stories in Love, Loss, and What I Wore because the book "is not about fashion; it is about what clothes really are to us, those moments when we are constantly trying to find our identity through them." Soon after its publication, Ephron gave the book to eight of her friends for Christmas. She became interested in writing her own version of the book. Once she decided to adapt Love, Loss, and What I Wore into a play, she and her sister emailed 100 women for stories.
The show's monologues were sourced largely from Beckerman's book. The Ephrons wove together a collection of stories adapted from the book with recollections of friends, including Rosie O'Donnell. One of the monologues that became a highlight of the original production was based on Nora Ephron's 2006 best-seller, I Feel Bad About My Neck.
Plot
A character called "Gingy" acts as the narrator. The show opens with her sketching various parts of her wardrobe that stir the most poignant memories. She weaves her life story among the other tales, describing her three marriages, "motherhood and the death of a child, each turning point marked by a particular item of clothing." Her life is represented beginning with experiences in a Brownies uniform and extending through her full life. Another character serves as the vixen, another plays a vulnerable gang member from Chicago, a third portrays a brave cancer patient, and the last serves as a mature woman pierced by vivid memories. One character named Heather chooses conservative "think" shoes over high heels in her youth, but at a later stage in life shows a preference for high heels. A gang member likes insignias that are prominent on sweaters and their creator.
Among the 28 stories, other notable tales revolve around the influence of Madonna ("any American woman under 40 who says she's never dressed as Madonna is either lying or Amish"), dressing room anxiety ("I'm an 8. I've always been an 8"), and mothers' taste in clothes ("I don't understand, you could look so good if you tried"). Three of the characters sometimes work as a trio and all characters have monologues.