"Bull in a China Shop" at LCT3 Inspired by Letters between Mary Woolley and Jeanette Marks

The play "Bull in a China Shop" is a bumptious title for a play with the presumption of self-importance & revelation.  Admittedly, I learned Mary Woolley was the first female president of a major American University.  The Univ she held forth at the helm for almost 4 decades was Mt Holyoke, in MA.  Mt Holyoke originated as a seminary school for women intended to instruct them in religious rigors as well as being a finishing school.   Strong homemaking skills & prepatory stages for marriage was the school's mission when Woolley became it's president.  Bravo to Ms Woolley for her radical & revolutionary changes which included dismissing lessons in linen care and housekeeping and reducing mandatory chapel attendance.  Surprising to learn of her reluctance to support women's suffragate.  Her not so clandestined love interest, Jeanette Marks, was allotted a teaching position at the Univ by Woolley.  Their lesbian love affair is at the heart of this disjointed drama about the meaning of love and the biopic legend of the maverick, Mary Woolley.  The empowerment of women is overshadowed by the histrionic whaling of love & betrayal.  And as much as it was taboo for women to be openly gay, it didn't seem to register much of a ripple amongst the ongoing ministrations of the University.  This production was a missed opportunity to explore the impact & inroads Woolley achieved, a clearer sense of life for women in this era and the pontification of prose gleaned from these literary women who left a legacy in the art of letter writing.  The play laid bare "the unbearable contents of my {Woolley's}heart," frankly, I didn't care.