urrently on
the Theatre Memphis Main Stage is Shirley Lauro's A Piece of My Heart,
an adaptation of Keith Walker's book by the same title, which comprised
26 interviews with women who served as nurses, clerks, Red Cross, USO, and
Support Services personnel in Vietnam.
Heart's staging of these first-person narratives is a composite of six characters and might better be described as narrative theatre collage than dramatization. Unfortunately, for all Lauro's honorable attempts at having these accounts tell us what it was like to witness and deal firsthand with the most internally and externally conflicted war in American history, Heart most often feels stagebound, abstract. The confusion and horror of Vietnam remains "as told to" storytelling, only occasionally transcending the narrative form to become a living theatrical experience.
The history of theatre is strewn with evidence that adapting another genre of writing to the stage is never a simple matter to be undertaken lightly. For every Christmas Memory or The Robber Bridegroom there is a Ulysses in Nighttown -- and even audience members who have been dazzled with the star turn or set designs of Sunset Boulevard are likely to admit that the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has virtually none of the urgent human detail that made Billy Wilder's 1950 film a true classic.
Now and then breaking through the fourth wall that Lauro's treatment of the interviews themselves rarely manages to do is a generally good TM cast. It includes Marian Crooks, Michelle R. Dach, Jeanna Juleson, Michael W. Magursky, Bonnie Daws Perkins, and -- in some of the most real and evocative moments of the evening -- Vanita Thomas. -- Hadley Hury
IN "TWENTY WILL NOT COME Again," writer Joan Williams portrays William Faulkner with the passion of a young protege and "soul mate." She describes one of the 20th century's most recognized literary figures as a multi-dimensional, fallible man. To her, Faulkner was as complex as his characters in The Sound and the Fury , the book which brought Williams and Faulkner together in the first place.
During the summer of 1949, Williams' fascination with the novel prompted her to arrange a meeting with Faulkner. Their letters and secret meetings went on for 13 years. In the production, Williams, played by Alice Rainey Berry in Circuit Playhouse's enticing performance, uses Faulkner's own words to reveal the insatiable love affair he had with writing. She also reveals his marital difficulties and his isolation from Oxford residents who didn't seem to understand or accept him.
More intriguing, however, are her reminiscences of their complex relationship. In the summer while hiding from gossip-mongers in a sweltering Mississippi forest, Williams describes seeing Faulkner sweat. Like any 20-year-old woman lucky enough to be in the exclusive audience of a genius twice her age, Williams questioned his affection. She took note of the physical markers of age, his smallness, for instance, and wondered if he had fallen in love with her.
She tells him she was born too late. He, played by Jenny Odle, gently touches her chin and says no. If she were born earlier he wouldn't have had time for her because he was too busy writing.
"Twenty" is a production of Voices of the South, a local troupe working to turn Southern literature into narrative theatre. On a minimalistic stage decorated as a lush (if somewhat cartoonish) forest, Berry and Odle deliver a simple, moving performance. Despite a somewhat confusing structure that is half-dialogue, half-monologue, the story progresses beautifully. Berry makes it easy to identify with Williams, who was undoubtedly a young woman of immense potential and insight.
Throughout its run, the work was preceded by various feature performers, Project:Motion, Jerry Dye and Company, and the Hutchison Theatre Troupe. At the last two performances Friday and Saturday, Joan Williams will appear in "The Contest," an adaptation of one of her short stories. Call Circuit Playhouse, 726-4656, for more information. -- Jacqueline Marino
NOW WELL INTO ITS SIX-WEEK run at Playhouse on the Square is The Diary of Anne Frank. Director Ken Zimmerman shows continuing growth with evoking and managing good ensemble work -- as he did earlier this season with a very different offering, Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Returning from the Washington area for this production is Leslie Churchill Ward, known for particularly strong performances over the past two years at Playhouse, including Lost in Yonkers and Dancing at Lughnasa.
THEATRE MEMPHIS' PTERODACtyls brought home from the Southeast Theatre Conference competition in Miami, March 5th-9th, the regional awards for Best Show, Best Actor (Brett D. Cullum), and Best Director (Anthony Isbell). The cast -- which also includes Kim Justis, Leigh Walden, Charles Ingram, and Michael Paul Duggan -- is now invited to compete in the American Association of Community Theatre Festival (AACT/FEST), June 18th-22nd, at the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre. Backstage crew for the Miami wins included TM executive director Michael Fortner (props), Corey Shelsta (lights and transportation), James Schroeder (floor manager and transportation), Tod Stricklin (sound), and Randall Hartzog (stage manager). -- HH