Christina Lahti fights against misogyny in her autobiographical play, The Smile of Her
Christina Lahti’s The Smile of Her is an autobiographical play with a sad list of content warnings. Lahti opens the vault of family secrets, starting with her childhood and ending with the recent deaths of her parents. She is unwaveringly intimate: family photos are projected onto the stage, and Lahti performs under her own name as she roars against the misogyny omnipresent in her family, education and Hollywood career.
Lahti wears all red. Her set is her childhood living room – a plastic-wrapped white sofa, a space she describes as having “no trace of living”. She is joined on stage by Isabella Ford (a delightful young actress), who helps her paint memories that reveal the terrors of living in a home – and a world – under the control of cruel men. Together they are outstanding, sensitively shining light on the patriarchal sickness of Lahti’s 1960s America.
One moment Ford and Lahti play sisters – nervously giggling when they show each other their private parts – and then they are mother and daughter as Lahti recalls walking in on her mother stuffing her postpartum belly into a girdle. Lahti recounts her university years where she grew her armpit hair and refused to be judged by her “fuckability”. She recounts harrowing stories of rape and a constant pressure to trade sexual favours for career success. In the later moments, Ford is an echo behind a gauze curtain, quietly reminding us of Lahti’s childhood innocence and dreams, now gone.
There are moments that feel cliched – Lahti’s years as a struggling actress are the least engaging. But her evolving relationship with her mother is tenderly portrayed. Her mother’s smile – once a sign of her subservience – becomes, later, a sign of her survival. Lahti stops blaming her mother for being an obedient housewife and redirects her anger at the power structures that demand it.
Sometimes Lahti slips out of acting: when she talks about her husband, when she explains that her sister wanted her to share the story of her trauma. Lahti shows us her family members, reams of anecdotes and painful memories, but never reveals her fundamental character. She tells us her sister confessed to suicidal thoughts and that she ignored them, and then moves on, remaining psychologically distant. The context is fixed – Lahti cannot change her experience, which she has a right to share (as we all do) but revealing how she navigated the events emotionally might have prevented the occasional slip from play to polemic.
Very few of us will get to tell a room of strangers the story of our life – fewer still would want to. Christina Lahti is an exception and she uses The Smile of Her to highlight how misogyny harmed her and her family.
The Smile of Her is on at Marylebone Theatre till the 29th August