In ‘Shameless Hussy,' Anaïs Nin makes incest and bigamy look conflict-free
Spend some time with Anaïs Nin, and you might start to feel like a monk, wondering why your life isn't all bread, cheese and olives followed immediately by sex on a chaise and capped off by some zesty journaling about it all.
But in 'Shameless Hussy,' there are good reasons why the endlessly quotable diarist, essayist and erotica author is better at following her bliss than the rest of us are — chief among them a wealthy, obliging and selectively unseeing husband. In Lynne Kaufman's biographical play about the prolific writer and lover, he's so undemanding that, unlike all the other major male characters, he never shows up to speak for himself.
At its best, the show, which opened Sunday, April 27, at the Marsh, makes you look past the privilege Anaïs (Arwen Anderson) enjoyed to wonder what truly holds back the rest of the world from slurping up life like a luxurious beverage.
As Anaïs glides from her banker husband to her actor husband (married to both at the same time), from author Henry Miller to psychoanalyst Otto Rank to her own father, in a blood-curdling incestuous episode (all the men are played by Johnny Moreno), she has something more than wealth. Whatever switch it is in the brain that perceives sexual mores and responds to shaming, hers is permanently flipped off. While hopefully the rest of us can all agree on the norm against incest, Anaïs' effortless flouting of other conventions is provocation and inspiration alike.
'Shameless Hussy,' directed by Warren David Keith, gets a huge boost in this project from Anderson, an actor with eyes so expressive you think you see in them the ocean that a childhood Anaïs describes from a sailing ship. They glint with mischief; then, when Anderson embodies Anaïs' mother, they ice out the whole world.
But it's not just the eyes, of course. When Anaïs describes an abortion — 'The child is lying at the door of my womb, strangling me like a demon' — Anderson makes the tension in her body so palpable that you, vicariously, might feel faint.
Her chewy French accent, however, amplifies a serious shortcoming in the script, which is that our heroine keeps teaching us life lessons in a ponderous, self-reverential tone — ironic for someone so disdainful of morals. It's a bit as if 'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations' had become a stage show. Toward the end, 'Shameless Hussy' even starts to sound like its own book-jacket summary had made it into the script: 'I wrote for 60 years. I wrote a woman's life from girlhood to the end. And left out nothing.'
If that's true of the play as well, then Nin might not ultimately be the most intriguing dramatic subject. In Kaufman's rendering, Anaïs comes off as self-possessed to the point of simplicity: It's no big deal to bust out of conservative feminine norms, because it doesn't trouble her. The loop is closed. Conflict is nil. Let the men who cycle in and out deal with their own feelings of jealousy and recrimination. Anaïs floats above it all, a mystery that might not have that much behind it.
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34 minutes ago
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French Open: Coco Gauff will face a Frenchwoman ranked 361st in the semifinals
Russia's Mirra Andreeva, right, speaks with umpire Miriam Bley during the quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open against France's Lois Boisson at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard) France's Lois Boisson reacts as she won the quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open against Russia's Mirra Andreeva at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard) Coco Gauff of the U.S. plays a shot against Madison Keys of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) Coco Gauff of the U.S. plays a shot against Madison Keys of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) Russia's Mirra Andreeva, right, speaks with umpire Miriam Bley during the quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open against France's Lois Boisson at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard) France's Lois Boisson reacts as she won the quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open against Russia's Mirra Andreeva at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard) Coco Gauff of the U.S. plays a shot against Madison Keys of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) PARIS (AP) — That No. 2 seed Coco Gauff reached Thursday's French Open semifinals should surprise no one. Her 361st-ranked opponent for a berth in the title match? That's a whole other story. Gauff made it to the final four at Roland-Garros for the third time, getting past No. 7 Madison Keys 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-1 on Wednesday in a quarterfinal between two Americans who both have won a major title. Advertisement Next up for 2023 U.S. Open champion Gauff? A matchup against French wild-card entry Loïs Boisson, who extended one of the most stunning runs in tennis history by beating No. 6 Mirra Andreeva 7-6 (6), 6-3. 'Unbelievable,' Boisson said. 'Incredible.' Those are a couple of good words for what's been happening. A year ago, Boisson was supposed to make her Grand Slam debut in Paris, but she tore a knee ligament and couldn't compete. Now 22, Boisson is the first woman to get to the semifinals of her first major tournament since Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati did it at the 1989 French Open and is the lowest-ranked to get that far at Roland-Garros in at least 40 years. Advertisement She's doing it with a game made for clay, anchored by heavy groundstrokes and buoyed by a rowdy, partisan crowd that rattled the 18-year-old Andreeva — she was warned for ball abuse for smacking one toward the upper deck after one bad volley — and was just as loud when Boisson upset No. 3 Jessica Pegula in the fourth round. 'It's impossible to describe,' Boisson said, 'what it feels like to have that kind of support.' Over and over again, the chair umpire tried to tell the 15,000 or so spectators to be quiet as their thunderous applause and shouts of Boisson's first name reverberated off the inside of the closed roof at Court Philippe-Chatrier. They didn't heed those requests. They jeered and whistled when Andreeva complained about noise between her first and second serves or argued line calls. And Boisson hung in there even while facing a set point in the first while down 5-3. Advertisement When the match ended, Boisson collapsed to her back, chest heaving and hands on her face. When she rose, there were flecks of rust-colored clay all over, including her forehead. No matter what happens the rest of the way, Boisson certainly has left her mark on the 2025 French Open. What else happened at the French Open on Wednesday? The men's quarterfinals later in the day were No. 1 Jannik Sinner against unseeded Alexander Bublik, and 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic against No. 3 Alexander Zverev. Who plays at Roland-Garros on Thursday? The two women's semifinals are the only singles matches on the Day 12 schedule, with three-time defending champion Iga Swiatek facing No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in just their second matchup at a Grand Slam tournament, and Gauff meeting Boisson, The men's semifinals are Friday. ___ Howard Fendrich has been the AP's tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: More AP tennis:
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34 minutes ago
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Gauff to pretend crowd are 'cheering for me' against Boisson
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Lois Boisson and the fairytale French Open run that deserves Roland Garros' biggest stage
ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — It is the sort of fairytale run that French tennis officials dream about. All the host nation's players, men and women, are usually long gone by this stage of their Grand Slam tournament. But Loïs Boisson, arguably the unlikeliest last one standing of the 27 players representing France who locked into the French Open starting gate a week ago Sunday, took to the red clay of Roland Garros Wednesday alongside the best in the world, for the quarterfinals. Advertisement In beating the world No. 3, Jessica Pegula, Boisson became the first French man or woman to reach the last eight here since 2017. She did it on a packed-to-the-gunwales Court Philippe-Chatrier, in front of a crowd of 15,000 screaming at every Boisson winner and every Pegula error as only a hometown crowd losing its mind during a borderline-inconceivable upset can do. Against Pegula, the crowd had been sparse early on, as it often is at the beginning of the day, when the women's matches tend to be scheduled. Those late-arriving Parisians who take their time over lunch normally settle into the stadium in time for the second contest of the day. But by the middle of the second set, when Pegula began to falter and Boisson started her charge, numbing the American with a seductive mix of spins and deep, looping balls before a shock of power across the net, the French had found their new hero — and their voice. At the end, during those nervy last four games when Boisson scrambled Pegula's brain for the final time, there might not have been a soul across Roland Garros, either in the stadium itself or the plazas outside it, who wasn't all in on this woman who had played just one top-tier WTA Tour match ahead of this tournament. 'In the beginning, even though there weren't many, you can still hear them on center court,' Boisson said with a combination of shyness and emotional exhaustion during her post-match news conference. 'But for the third set, it was full. It was incredible. As soon as a point was tight, it would be really incredible.' When the time came to play Mirra Andreeva, the 18-year-old Russian who is basically a Grand Slam veteran these days, the stadium was closer to full from almost the beginning. It was quiet to begin, as Andreeva's singeing backhand down the line and court coverage kept Boisson's weaponry at bay. But late in a first set that looked lost, Boisson started to find the patterns that had taken her past Pegula. Advertisement Camping in her backhand corner, Boisson can hit inside-out forehands that rise and dip all day. But what's more important is her ability to lace them down the line, keeping her opponent honest in those diagonal exchanges. She burned Andreeva again and again and again as the set wore on, dragging the Russian into a tiebreak and stealing it away to win the first set. The world No. 361, Boisson was only playing in this tournament thanks to the generosity and desperation of France's tennis federation. The country had just two players in the WTA top 100 in early May, but as the owner and organizer of this event, the federation was able to award wild-card entries to seven other Frenchwomen. Boisson, who hails from Dijon, 200 miles southeast of Paris in Burgundy, is just four months into a comeback from surgery to repair an ACL knee ligament tear. She was world No. 513 then, before winning 16 of 21 lower-tier matches in the run-up to Roland Garros. When her injury happened, she was supposed to be preparing for her French Open debut, having received a wild card on the back of winning four tournaments in the first four months of 2024 and 31 matches of 38 played. She has paid back France's tennis federation, the FFT, in spades, becoming the story of the tournament. Even in a week that Paris Saint-Germain became kings of European soccer, Boisson has landed on the cover of the dailies and at the top end of news programs. She is the most famous French sportswoman, if only for a fortnight. And the only place in the country that she hasn't been given true, top billing is the tournament at which she is the star. Thanks to Boisson and Pegula's exploits, two women again delivered what the leaders of this tournament — Gilles Moretton, the president of the FFT, and Amelie Mauresmo, the former world No. 1 and French Open tournament director — said they most likely could not: roughly two-and-a-half hours of scintillating competition worthy of the biggest stage at the event. Advertisement In the round of 16, Iga Świątek, the four-time Roland Garros champion, and Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon winner, went the distance in a match that saw Swiatek rise from a coffin of red clay to outlast one of her staunchest rivals. On Saturday, Boisson and her compatriot, Elsa Jacquemot, another French wild card, had wowed a packed stadium on Court Simonne-Mathieu. The triptych of banner matches for women's tennis followed a week of Moretton and Mauresmo insisting that putting a women's match in the Philippe-Chatrier night session would be bad for spectators. It would risk, they said, not giving fans the sort of entertainment for which they had plunked down hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of euros. On the second day of the tournament, Moretton had said that organizers base the night-session assignment on what is 'better for sport', adding that the people who make the schedule 'have to think about what could be better for spectators.' Five days later, Mauresmo insisted that the issue wasn't about women's matches not being 'worthy to play at night' but about their length. She looks at the sold-out Chatrier after sunset and wonders what all the fuss is about. People love the product on offer. 'What's the problem?' Several of the most prominent women in the tournament have had serious issues with Mauresmo's and Moretton's interpretation of what would be 'better for spectators.' 'I do think that women's matches are worthy of a night spot,' said Gauff, who often plays then at the U.S. Open in front of 24,000 people at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Ons Jabeur, the three-time major finalist who has been sidelined by injuries for much of the past year, targeted organizers after her first-round loss. 'I hope whoever is making the decision, I don't think they have daughters, because I don't think they want to treat their daughters like this,' she said in a news conference Tuesday. Advertisement Jabeur also wrote on social media: 'A lot of amazing athletes have been told the same things over and over. That no one watches. That no one cares. That women's sport doesn't 'move people.' Judgment comes quickly, often from those who've never even watched a full match. One empty stadium is held up as proof. The packed ones? Conveniently ignored.' Madison Keys, the reigning Australian Open champion, lost to Gauff in the quarterfinal before Boisson and Andreeva took the court, was characteristically understated but no less pointed in her criticism. 'I think women typically have night matches everywhere else,' said Keys, whose final four matches in Melbourne, against Elina Svitolina, Rybakina, Świątek and Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, were four of the most riveting duels in the sport this year. 'I think women's matches are very entertaining and they have great value, and they deserve to be the feature match.' Swiatek was matter-of-fact in saying that 'they should be equal'. The matches that have made the cut for primetime have only strengthened the words of Gauff, Jabeur, Keys, Świątek and Pegula, who compared talking about the issue every year to 'hitting her head against the wall.' In more than half of the night sessions in 2025, patrons have witnessed lopsided wins from the top men that didn't last as long as those missed opportunities to feature the women. Jannik Sinner (twice), Novak Djokovic and Holger Rune all dispatched their opponents in just over two hours, with the outcome of the match all but certain long before the conclusion. Carlos Alcaraz needed 94 minutes of thunderclap tennis to overwhelm an injured Tommy Paul. Last year offered much of the same. Richard Gasquet, a French favorite-son now ranked No. 124, and countryman Pierre-Hugues Herbert, a wild card doubles specialist, were deemed worthy of the bright lights in their mismatches against Sinner and Djokovic. No women made the cut. Advertisement And so it was for Boisson as she took on Andreeva, the brightest of new lights in the women's top 10. Andreeva won two WTA 1,000s in a row earlier this year, the level just below the Grand Slams. No other player, man or woman, has accomplished that this season. Andreeva looked like that player in the second set, moving up 3-0 with a combination of quality and mental strength. But the intriguing relationship between youth and experience at the heart of this match had not fully blossomed. Boisson is four years Andreeva's senior, but this is her first Grand Slam main draw. Andreeva is a French Open semifinalist, but she had never played a player with home advantage deep in a major. The crowd was doing everything it could to disrupt the flow of the match and turn it in Boisson's favor, and Andreeva, slowly and then all at once, looked like the player who had never been there before. With Boisson serving down 3-2, Andreeva gestured up at her box as if telling someone to leave. At 3-3, Andreeva missed a volley on top of the net and rocketed a ball into the top tier of Court Philippe-Chatrier. The boos that erupted sucked in every last bit of air in the stadium. When Andreeva double-faulted to give Boisson the break, the match felt like it was over, and so it was. Boisson streaked her back with the red clay, celebrating the most unlikely 7-6(6), 6-3 win and semifinal berth in a match that lasted 128 minutes, 34 more than Alcaraz's beatdown of Paul. The tournament can point to tangible reasons on this occasion. Andreeva's presence in the women's doubles event means she has to play earlier because she has another match later in the day. The women's semifinals are the day after that Boisson-Andreeva quarterfinal, so playing earlier gave them more time to rest. But that is a necessity because the women's semifinals are played as a one-day session, straight through from 3 p.m. The men's semis are split across two sessions: 3 p.m. and 'not before' 7 p.m. A similar arrangement for the women's matches would have permitted a later slot for one of their quarterfinals. The tournament put Boisson and Andreeva in the second Philippe-Chatrier slot, by which time the stadium was close to capacity for a tussle between two players who rely on guile, variety and the ability to conjure a bullet groundstroke among the magic at any given moment. Boisson, a seemingly cool cat who walked onto Chatrier for her morning hit on Monday with a sense of awe and determination, was ready for the challenge. 'I told myself, 'OK, I will play matches on this court, but it's OK. It's a court, like every court'.' She might have to get more used to it, too. Having started the event at No. 361 in the world, she will end it inside the top 60. That makes her the number one women's tennis player in France. She will get another chance to tell herself things are OK Thursday, against Coco Gauff, the world No. 2. Just not at night.
