Stage Review - Trifles (Saltfire Theatre)

Stage Review - Trifles
Presented By: Saltfire Theatre - Port Townsend, WA
Show Run: January 08 - January 11, 2026
Date Reviewed: Friday, January 09, 2026
Run Time: 40 Minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman

Ah, women and their trifles. While men are out doing the hard work of consequence, women while away their time with minutiae—the small things that only matter to them and have no real bearing on anything important or substantial. If you listen to the male characters in Susan Glaspell’s 1916 feminist one-act play Trifles, that’s precisely the attitude you’ll encounter. Of course, over the years we’ve learned that it’s often in the details where the truth lies, and we’ve also come to understand that the feminine perspective is not to be (pun very much intended) trifled with. Though plenty of barriers still exist for women to be taken seriously without question, we’ve come a decent way since this play was first produced. Glaspell’s work interrogates not only a viewpoint that long relegated women’s voices to the sewing circle, but also how that male-centric attitude impacts women—and what actions, silences, and consequences can emerge from such repression. That interrogation is revisited by Saltfire Theatre in a production that ran for just one weekend in early January at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds 4-H Building, home to the company’s previously well-received Uncle Vanya.

First performed in 1916, Trifles was inspired by a real murder case Glaspell covered as a journalist, but the play unfolds less as a mystery and more as a reckoning of sorts. Set in the isolated farmhouse of John Wright, the action follows a county attorney, sheriff, and neighboring farmer investigating Wright’s death, while their wives wait nearby and while the deceased’s wife is in prison, charged with his murder. The men search for overt signs of guilt—forced entry, motive, confession—while openly mocking the women’s attention to domestic details. Yet it is precisely through those overlooked observations that the women begin to reconstruct Minnie Wright’s emotional reality, uncovering a life shaped by isolation, repression, and quiet cruelty. Glaspell’s genius lies in her refusal to sensationalize the crime itself; instead, she reveals how truth is encoded in care, habit, and damage—the very that are too often overlooked, or taken for granted.

That attention to quiet revelation is mirrored in Genevieve Barlow’s direction, which favors patience over propulsion. The production resists any urge to rush toward resolution, allowing the audience to take in the characters, the setting, and the context before the investigation fully takes hold. Physical movement is restrained and intentional, underscored by a low hum of nervous energy that simmers beneath the surface—particularly among the women, who seem to sense the weight of what they are uncovering long before they give it voice. The result is a staging that trusts stillness, reinforcing the play’s central argument: meaning is not seized through authority, but uncovered through attention.

That sense of place is further heightened by Saltfire’s choice of venue. The Jefferson County Fairgrounds 4-H Building, with its utilitarian, rural character, feels almost purpose-built for Trifles, just as it did for the previous Uncle Vanya. Rather than masking the space, the production leans into its rustic honesty. The simplicity of the room mirrors the Wright farmhouse itself—functional, unadorned, and quietly oppressive. Scenic elements remain spare, allowing the architecture to do much of the storytelling, while wooden textures and practical details evoke a domestic world shaped by labor rather than comfort. It’s an inspired alignment of play and place, reinforcing the idea that this story could exist anywhere women’s lives have been reduced to background noise.

Libby Wennstrom’s Costume design further sharpens these distinctions. The women’s clothing reads as worn-in and practical, shaped by repetition and necessity, while the men arrive more formally assembled—visually reinforcing their separation from the domestic world they so casually dismiss. These contrasts are subtle but precise, underscoring how class, gender, and power are encoded even in fabric and fit.

The male characters embody institutional confidence, each in his own register. As the County Attorney, Nick Magles carries an air of casual condescension, his dismissals delivered with practiced ease rather than overt cruelty. Scott Bahlmann’s Mr. Hale is less overtly dismissive, but no less emblematic of the problem—well-meaning, yet oblivious, and Scott’s delivery captures the quiet honesty of his character nicely. Doug Caskey’s Sheriff Peters occupies a middle ground, his authority tempered by moments of hesitation that suggest a capacity for empathy, though not quite enough to overcome the gravitational pull of the system he represents. Together, the men illustrate how oppression often functions most effectively not through malice, but through assumption.

It is the women, however, who carry the heart of the play. Maude Eisele’s Mrs. Hale brings a nervous urgency to the role, her guilt over past inaction slowly hardening into resolve. Michelle Hensel’s Mrs. Peters begins aligned with her husband’s authority, but gradually awakens to her own lived experience, her empathy unfolding in careful, devastating increments. Their growing bond—formed through recognition rather than rhetoric—becomes the emotional center of the production, a shared understanding forged through attention to what others dismiss. Overall, it’s an ensemble that understands the message the play is trying to send, that the dismissal of a person, or group of people, based on nothing more than what they are, and not who they are, will be done at the peril of the judgmental.

At its core, Trifles is not about a murder so much as it is about who is allowed to interpret it. Saltfire Theatre’s production understands that Susan Glaspell’s play is an indictment of systems that dismiss emotional labor, domestic knowledge, and women’s lived experience as irrelevant. By honoring stillness, patience, and the so-called “small things,” this staging makes a quiet but forceful case: justice cannot exist without empathy, and truth cannot be found by those who refuse to see. More than a century after its debut, Trifles remains unsettlingly relevant—and in this intimate, thoughtfully staged revival, Saltfire Theatre reminds us why listening still matters.

The Saltfire Theatre production of Trifles has closed, but to follow them and learn more about their theatre and upcoming shows, visit https://saltfiretheatre.org/index.html.

Photo credit: Ryan Hatmaker and Maude Eisele