There were quite a few aspects about the play "Overtones" by Alice Gerstenberg that I found rather interesting and enjoyable. First of all, I liked how the stage directions set off little "hints" about the play's characters. For example, in the first stage direction, it is explained that Harriet is wearing "a light, 'jealous' green", and her counterpart Hetty wears a darker shade of that jealous green. This hints at two things, one, that Harriet's character is jealous, and two, that the undertones are stronger and darker beings than the overtones.
Another thing that I liked, was the balance between humor and sadness throughout the play. Sure, it's funny because it's two women of societal values arguing with each other and themselves while being completely "fake", or "two-faced" rather, but it is also sad that both women have to argue with themselves to try to maintain sanity, which in itself is pretty insane. One thing that I did not understand though was the ending.
In Script Analysis, we discussed how the characters' undertones were absorbed by their overtones, implying that societal values were more important than women trying to show their real feelings and getting what they want. I disagree, however. The women did technically get what they wanted. I feel that the undertones being absorbed by their overtones was not a sign of the overtone's weakness to societal values, but rather their weakness to their undertones. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but the way that I saw that ending was that the hatred of the undertones became so loud and violent that it was absorbed by the undertones, sort of like the undertones had taken over the bodies of the overtones, and after that moment of them saying their goodbyes, the "claws" had officially come out. Now, maybe they still will be "ladies" on the outside, which I suppose is what they meant by societal values being more important, but I disagree with the general thought of the class that, as I understood them stating, the women just gave in to society's morals of keeping your mouth shut because ladies would never get what they wanted anyway.
