Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Arts Club Granville Island Stage to January 24, 2026

Tickets from $29 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com

Posted December 5, 2025

Nostalgia is everywhere at Christmas and theatre companies unabashedly produce shows at this time of year that speak of simpler, happier times. Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women, set back in the mid 1880s and adapted for stage by American playwright Lauren M. Gunderson, presents a simpler, happier time in the USA. But the American Civil War was raging, the men were off to war and wives and mothers back home were struggling to manage with dwindling resources. Alcott, in her mid to late teens, worked as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper and even laundress to earn money for the family. Before her twentieth birthday, she started writing short stories for various newspapers, earning a small pittance, but eventually she made enough money to support herself, her mother and her three sisters. She went on to become a prolific short story writer and novelist, sometimes using the nom de plume A.M. Barnard for her early sensational thrillers and pulp fiction.

Act 1 opens with the Alcott character (Kate Besworth) explaining how she began writing semi-autobiographical Little Women. Alcott quickly morphs into Jo, the central character of both the novel and this adaptation.  It’s sweet and sisterly and somewhat bland despite the effervescent performance by Besworth as tomboy Jo, one of the March family’s three daughters including conservative Meg (Elizabeth Barrett), shy Beth (Ming Hudson) and outspoken Amy (Kaitlyn Yott). Long-suffering mother Marmee (Erin Ormond) is wise and steady, sheltering as best she can, her little family during hard times. Their nearest neighbour is wealthy Mr. Laurence whose grandson Laurie (Conor Wylie) befriends the March family, especially Jo. It’s all pleasantly episodic leading up to Act 2 when things finally start to get interesting.

Gunderson’s adaptation is clever: Alcott appears as a character before transforming into Jo; some dialogue is lifted directly from the novel; characters speak aloud their inner thoughts and dreams; and the narrative voice shifts from character to character. The fourth wall comes and goes. And although the play proceeds episodically – this happened and this happened and then this happened – there is an arc: childhood, romance, illness, loss, travel and career. Alcott, not Jo, gets the first and last lines in the play.

Set design by Jennifer Stewart is practical and functional featuring a river rock fireplace, piano, settee and a multipurpose staircase against a painted background of forest and a small, distant cottage, presumably the March family’s modest cottage. Jillian White’s lighting design (and changing floral arrangements) take us through the seasons while Barbara Clayden’s costumes suggest the family’s belt-tightening: simple cotton gowns.

Without Besworth’s vivacity, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women would not be much more than agreeable. Besworth captures the spirit of Jo, a young woman eager to break free of societal expectations. A journal entry of Alcott’s reads, “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body…. because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.” Besworth shakes hands with gusto, strides across the stage, hoists her skirts up to make trousers and in a dance scene with Laurie, I think she leads. Besworth radiates energy and confidence. The play is Jo’s and this production is Besworth’s.

In contrast to Jo’s adventuresome spirt is Meg, content to marry, have children and make jelly.  Elizabeth Barrett is lovely in the role: softspoken, womanly, completely tongue-tied in the budding romance with John (Nick Fontaine, who also portrays Professor Friedrich Bhaer). Ming Hudson has the unrewarding job of making pale and sickly Beth more than pale and sickly. Kaitlyn Yott does a fine job of taking young and petulant Amy into opinionated adulthood. Conor Wylie makes a playful, engaging – and eventually lovestruck – Laurie.

Directed by Barbara Tomasic, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is sweet, sometimes sentimental, and mild mannered. It speaks to different times, different values – especially in women’s gradual move out of the home and into the world. It celebrates family ties – especially amongst women, especially between sisters. This is all good stuff but as a girl, I couldn’t read Anne of Green Gables or Little Women; like Alcott’s Jo, I wanted much more conflict, much more derring-do, more drama. However, as the curtain fell and I turned to my guest, I discovered that she had shed a tear or two so, clearly, Little Women – one hundred and forty years later – still has the power to move readers or, in this case, audiences, to tears.