A Woman Among Women ★★★

How much you enjoy A Woman Among Women, the new play by Julia May Jonas at LCT3 at Lincoln Center, will depend a great deal on your working knowledge of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Unlike Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain, which tackled The Crucible, it’s less a feminist critique of Miller’s work than a response to it, a 21st-century reimagining from a female perspective about how even the best of us can slide down a moral slope.

If only the first two-thirds of the show weren’t so twee.

Like All My Sons, this play’s action takes place entirely in one family’s bustling backyard, one where neighbors — a doctor, a lawyer, their partners and children — drop by to chat and catch up. Jonas doesn’t make literal translations of Miller’s characters, but fathers and sons have become mothers and daughters, and the sexy ingenue part is now assigned to a tall young man whose physical attributes are often commented upon by the women. And instead of the Midwest, everything’s happening in modern-day Northampton, Massachusetts, an “ethnically and racially diverse area with hippie tendencies, a strong LGBTQ+ community, and a developed social conscience.”

Fine.

But the disciplined pacing Miller’s plays — and this one — require is absent. Instead, as directed by Sarah Cameron Hughes, it’s all rather loosey-goosey.

The audience surrounds the action on all four sides, with some actors sitting next to attendees while other performers fluidly come and go. Over and over characters enter and exit the backyard without substantial reason, such as when Sarah, the doctor in the neighborhood, arrives, chomping on a banana that she’s just retrieved:

SARAH

We had a standoff at the OK Corral last night

I said No. More.

You know?

Get a goddamn reusable bag

Or fuckin’ 20

Because they fuckin’ exist in our goddamn house like little —

scrunchy sculptures shoved into every inch of negative space

And get your ass in your goddamn Prius

And go get us some goddamn groceries

I wanted to say

This is what you do!

This is what you have to do!

But you can’t say that you can’t say that

Because then it’s an evening of licking wounds

And I don’t have time for that.

So.

No bananas, no milk for the coffee

He acts like I’m picky

I say, you don’t know picky. You. Don’t. Know. Picky.

That kind of chatter carries on for a full hour, along with songs, a dance, and a group clap-along. Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins are even passed around.

But then, just as hope for the show has almost fully evaporated, there’s a coup de théâtre — major props to scenic designer Brittany Vasta for her excellent work — and a total change of pace and style.

At which point the real play emerges, letting the drama shine, making it clear that Jonas has something worthwhile to say and consider. Characters face consequences for their actions, intentional or not. The actors suddenly seem like real people who should be taken seriously, the audience stops squirming and sits up, and the production transforms. Banality is replaced by complexity, silliness by sapience.

If only it hadn’t taken so long.