[NEohioPAL] Posting: Plain Dealer Review of TRYING at Kennedy's, PlayhouseSquare

[Greg Cesear]

Dear Neohiopal Friends:

Weare pleased to post this review and encourage
your attendance.

Review The Plain Dealer, Friday November 11,2011

TRYING by Joanna McCleland Glass

What: Cesear's Forum presents the two-person play by Joanna McClelland Glass, 
             directed by Greg Cesear.
When: Through Saturday, Dec. 10.
Where: Kennedy's Down Under, PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland.
Tickets: $15. Go to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.


It's an unwritten theatrical rule: If a play centers on a crusty old curmudgeon who terrifies 
everyone within earshot, he's sure to be warm, fuzzy and avuncular by the time the curtain falls. 

That is the familiar trajectory faithfully followed in "Trying" by Joanna McClelland Glass, now 
at Cesear's Forum. Predictable as the journey is, however, this script is verbally dexterous, often 
amusing when it isn't poignant, and provides a splendid platform for a matched pair of exceptional 
performances. 

In the 1960s, the playwright served as an assistant to octogenarian Judge Francis Biddle, a person 
with a truly majestic resume. Biddle was personal secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, served as U.S. attorney general during World War II and was a judge at the 
Nuremberg trials. 

Glass' semiautobiographical play encounters Biddle in his final year of life, 1967, when he is 
attempting to wrap up multitudinous literary affairs while battling a fleet of physical afflictions. His 
wife, Katherine, has hired yet another young woman, Sarah Schorr, to assist him. 

Helping Biddle is not a simple task, since he is often a stooped and wrinkled insult machine. The 
judge clearly relishes intimidating his fragile hirelings, reducing them to tears before they flee his employ. 

But Sarah, fresh from the wilds of Saskatchewan, is made of sterner stuff. Plus, she's eager to find 
refuge from a failing marriage and is ambitious to begin a writing career. 

Working out of a small office, located above the garage behind his Washington, D.C., home, Biddle 
rules his tiny roost with bluster. The playwright smoothly interweaves Biddle's crotchety quirks 
("Don't touch the heaters!") with memories and regrets from his storied career. In particular, he is 
haunted by his inability to change the policy of Japanese internment during World War II. 

Glenn Colerider is fully present as Judge Biddle, skillfully navigating this accomplished man's changeable 
moods and fencing with words even as he totters towards death. His Biddle takes fiendish delight in 
correcting Sarah's grammatical flaws, but he also pauses to share some gossip. 

Having read that Jackie Kennedy is dating Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, Biddle muses, 
"We all knew the Bouvier girls liked money, but we didn't know how much." 

As Sarah, Tricia Bestic doesn't opt for the easy interpretation of a feisty "new woman." Instead, she 
works within the "Mad Men" strictures of a professional woman in the '60s, controlling her character's 
impulses and only letting her temper flare at the most telling moments. 

Under the precise direction of Greg Cesear, the production overcomes the script's small flaws. These 
include a paucity of information about Sarah's life and dreams, so we could fully appreciate her in all 
dimensions. And Biddle's own remarkable accomplishments get too little reflection. 

But by the end, Colerider and Bestic fashion a friendship between their characters that feels genuine and 
significant. On any stage, that's magic worth seeing firsthand. 

-- Christine Howey 
Freelance critic Howey's blog is raveandpan.blogspot.com. 
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