[NEohioPAL] Review of "Crimes of the Heart" at Actors' Summit

[Bob Abelman]

Actors' Summit offers slice of life dramedy, but just a thin slice 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the Times papers 5/6/10

 

Virtually nothing happens in Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart, currently on stage at the Actors' Summit in Hudson.  This is actually a good thing.

The play begins after everything of significance has already occurred.  What the audience witnesses is the intriguing slice-of-life that takes place while waiting for the other shoe to drop.  

The three adult Magrath sisters reunite in the small-town Mississippi home of their grandfather.  The eldest sister, Lenny, lives in the home and is saddled with taking care of the family patriarch.  The self-absorbed middle sister, Meg, who long outgrew her hometown, arrives from California, where she is pursuing an unsuccessful singing career.  The youngest, Babe, is just returning from a night in jail after shooting her husband, which is why the girls have reunited.

 

The sisters congregate in the kitchen and talk.  They talk about their unfulfilled lives.  They talk about the family's tragic legacy-a mother's suicide and a father's abandonment-which set their unfulfilled lives in motion.  They talk about the shooting.  Only through overheard phone conversations and the occasional visit by cousin Chick and Babe's attorney do we learn of anything happening outside the cloistered confines of the family homestead.

 

No, nothing happens. Nothing progresses.  Will Lenny emerge from her go-nowhere, do-nothing life?  Will Meg move beyond her failures?  Will Babe go to jail?   Not in this play.

 

Crimes of the Heart is a play of discourse and disclosure, where action is described not enacted, and where time and storyline stand still.

 

What makes this play the recipient of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award is that all this discourse, disclosure and description is marvelously conceived and carefully woven into a truly absorbing tale.  It is hilariously funny one moment and depressingly tragic the next, which makes for an intriguing bit of storytelling. 

 

In order to transform this superb play into a superb production, a director needs to balance the comedy and the drama, and find the small, delicate moments between them that triggers the characters' heartfelt reactions and responses. No easy task.

 

In the Actors' Summit production, which runs until May 16, director MaryJo Alexander finds the right balance but not the delicate moments.   Nothing in the lighting, set design or staging hints at a play built for comedy or one leaning toward drama, which creates a natural, comfortable environment for both to spring forth.  Yet, the characters' actions and responses do not seem to be organic.  Much of the comedy and drama in this production seems uninspired and contrived.  

 

Although Diane Mull, Constance Thackaberry and Jen Walker try hard to bring Lenny, Meg and Babe to life, none capture the complexity of these women.  They succeed on some fronts; the three have established a nice sister dynamic and distinctive, dysfunctional personalities.  However, these characters do not come across as fully formed, multidimensional and genuine.

 

Similarly, Mary Mahoney, who plays the annoying cousin Chick, and Peter Voinovich, who plays Meg's hometown love interest, seem artificial and underdeveloped.  Only Keith Stevens, as the young attorney with an emotional investment in Babe's case, delivers the goods. 

 

Underdeveloped characters are problematic in a character-driven play where nothing happens on a stage as intimate as the one at Actors' Summit.  Still, the strength of this play and an otherwise fine production of it make Crimes of the Heart a piece of slice-of-life theater worth seeing.

 
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