Review: The stitched-together comedy of Wives comes apart at the seams at East West Players

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Set us as preferred Jaclyn Backhaus’ “Wives,” which opened Sunday at East West Players’ David Henry Hwang Theater, examines the condition of women in four different eras: 16th century France, 1920 India, 1960s Idaho and present-day “Oxbridge,” an elite British university fictional hybrid.This isn’t an epic work but a compilation of comic sketches tied together with heavy thematic string.I’m not sure that calling it a play is quite accurate.

It’s really more of an outline for a theatrical work.Drama relies on discovery, and Backhaus has settled for a demonstration of prepackaged political points.Time and again, the female characters, conditioned to be thrown into brutal competition with one another, find relief in solidarity.

Wives and mistresses battle each other in the French court of King Henry II and in the palace of Maharaja Madho Singh II.Ernest Hemingway’s ex-wives and widow transform a liquor-fueled wake into a series of marital autopsies.

Two students at the imagined Oxbridge University (borrowed from Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”) bond at a newly formed essay writing space for witches.The system is turned upside down when these women do the one thing the patriarchy never anticipates: band together in the realization that men aren’t the prize but the systemic problem.

These vignettes — “scenes” would be giving too much credit — eventually drift into musical riffs or spoken-word rants.“Wives” had its premiere at New York’s Playwrights Horizons in 2019, but there’s a reason you probably never heard anything about it.

I was a little taken aback by the clumsiness of the comedy, which makes even “Saturday Night Live” of recent vintage seem like a work of genius.East West Players and Hypokrit Live Arts co-produced this Southern California premiere of “Wives,�...