St. Theresa's Prayer

Thought you could use this today:

May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.... May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

Come Back, Little Sheba

If it hadn’t been for a lead-footed taxi driver, I would have arrived at the theatre so late my press tickets would have already been turned in at the box office. I’m so used to 3 p.m. curtains on Sunday that I forgot this one was for 2. At 1:25 I was casually chatting on the phone with my cousin in Baltimore about how nice our surprise party for my mother’s 90th birthday had been the day before. I hung up and all of a sudden realized the show was at 2. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my pocketbook and jumped in a taxi. I asked the driver to go as fast as he could and he did; when we hit traffic in the theatre district I got out and ran. And I made it! Fortunately this revival of “Come Back, Little Sheba” was worth all the rushing.

The play, as you probably know, is rather depressing, but the experience of seeing it is enlivening because the performances are all so outstanding. S. Epatha Merkerson’s portrayal of Lola, a lonely housewife in a loveless marriage, shows a woman desperately trying to keep her pain from overwhelming her. Merkerson makes her so achingly real I wanted to go to Lola and give her some praise and encouragement, to help her see she has value. Her life with Doc, a repressed alcoholic chiropractor (Kevin Anderson), has not turned out the way she had expected when she was young and pretty.

Doc’s life hasn’t gone according to expectation either. He had planned to become a doctor, but that goal was abandoned years earlier after Lola became pregnant before they were married. They wed hastily, but the baby died and Lola couldn’t have more children. Lola and Doc have been going through the motions of a marriage ever since.

Moments break through when it seems Doc still loves Lola, which makes it all the sadder when he inevitably falls off the wagon and lashes out at her with all the rage he’s been burying for so many years. Anderson plays it just right. This scene could be disastrous with a less gifted actor, but Anderson strikes just the right balance for a man full of despair and disillusionment who has finally reached the breaking point. It’s good to see this actor back on Broadway in a solid dramatic role. He was the best Biff I’ve ever seen when he did “Death of a Salesman” in the late 1990s, but the last time I saw him on stage was in a dreadful musical call “Brooklyn,” which was a real waste of his talent. I also loved him as Father Ray in the short-lived, too-good-for-television series “Nothing Sacred.”

Scenic designer James Noone should be commended for creating a set that matches the mood of despair and decline. I felt the tightness of the shabby little house, with its dining room rented out for extra cash. A backdrop of other houses and buildings close by added to the feel of being penned in and suffocating.

The Little Sheba of the title was a dog Lola loved and still dreams about. Although it’s been awhile since the dog disappeared, Lola continues to stand out front in the evening and call for her: “Come back, Little Sheba.” It’s just one more indication of Lola’s refusal to accept reality, and it’s one of the eeriest. Her voice is so full of longing and the struggle to hang on. Of course Little Sheba isn’t coming back anymore than Lola’s youth or happiness or desirability.

Shirley Booth won a Tony when she played Lola in the 1950 original production. (She also won an Oscar for her movie portrayal.) I don’t know who will win the best actress Tony this year, but I do know Merkerson will be in the running. She’s wonderful. Her performance will be remembered for a long, long time.

The Little Mermaid

I try to be a positive person. I firmly believe this leads to positive experiences. But there are limits, and I encountered a big one last night. No amount of positive attitude could ever make sitting through “The Little Mermaid” a good experience.

In more than four decades of going to musicals I have never seen an uglier show. Scenic designer George Tsypin chose the most garish shades of green, orange, purple and blue imaginable, and Natasha Katz’s glaring lighting made sure we didn’t miss an inch of it. By the middle of the first act I was actually beginning to feel sick. Then I wondered, was this what Tsypin had in mind? Was he trying to make the audience so nauseous that we would really feel we were at sea? If so, it worked.

And the plastic! The waves weren’t just at the bottom of the sea, they came in sideways from stage right and left. The poor actors must have felt they were suffocating. I felt that way in the sixth row center. This is one show where a balcony seat would be an advantage, and the lobby or sideway would be even better. Earlier in the day I had been reading an article about the health danger of exposure to plastic in “O, the Oprah Magazine.” These performers will be filing some heavy duty liability claims one day.

The sets aren’t the only thing that makes this production hard to watch. Stephen Mear’s choreography looks like a class is aerobic skating. To simulate swimming, he has all the sea critters whizzing back and forth on those shoe skates children wear now, the ones that are sending them to emergency rooms in large numbers. The stage looks like a giant underwater roller rink. Doesn’t Mear know a skating show, “Xanadu,” is already being done, just two blocks away at the Helen Hayes Theatre? Far more enjoyably, I might add.

Toward the end of the first act the curtain descended right during one of the grating song and dance numbers, the house lights came up and we were informed that the show was being stopped for a technical difficulty. Who would have known? They could have kept going. No one would have noticed because the whole show is one big difficulty.

In thinking about it later from a distance -- could there ever be enough distance from this show? -- I did come up with a positive use for this production. The producers of this $15 million atrocity should market it to blind or seeing-impaired audiences. The story, after all, based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, is sweet, the music is pleasant and the singing is worthy. If one could be spared the hideous sets and unimaginative choreography, it wouldn’t be a bad experience. Maybe they could just turn it into a radio play so no one would have to endure the visuals.

The only times the staging was good was when Prince Eric fell from his ship, slowly plunging to the bottom of the sea, and later when Ariel, the Little Mermaid, swam up through the water to the surface. Entirely different set and lighting designers must have been involved with those scenes. The colors were subdued and the light was subtle. Those scenes were the simplest in appearance, and yet the most cinematic. The rest, with all those gaudy colors, were ghastly.

I felt sorry for the actors. Sean Palmer as Prince Eric and Sierra Boggess as Ariel were fine and should have been presenting this tale in a simpler production, something like “The Fantasticks,” which portrays a lovely story with beautiful music and no frills. I don’t know if it was my imagination -- was I just projecting my own misery? -- or if I was sensing something, but the actors looked uncomfortable. I really think they seemed embarrassed by the whole spectacle. Dear Tituss Burgess kept a big smile on his face the whole time. God only knows how he did it.

Tituss, John Treacy Egan, who had a nice scene playing a wacky chef, and Norm Lewis, who played Triton, the king of the sea, have all blessed my life personally, and bless many lives through their big hearts. Tituss sang last year at Broadway Blessing and wowed us with his gorgeous voice. He had spent time during the summer in India with Mary-Mitchell Campbell and her wonderful organization ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty). They worked with orphans and performed for the villagers.

John sang for us the year before after Mark McVey had to cancel at the last minute. Even though he was starring in the demanding role of Max Bialystock in “The Producers” eight times a week, John learned the song, “Ordinary Miracles,” and sang it on his one night off for Broadway Blessing’s 10th anniversary celebration.

And then there’s Norm, who came up to the South Bronx several years ago to talk to children I was working with in an after-school program. His schedule changed after he had agreed to be there and he ended up needing to be in downtown Manhattan around the same time. I would certainly have understood if he hadn’t come, but he did. Even though he knew he could only make the very end of the gathering, he took car service all the way up there and was wonderful with the children -- and the staff, who were in love with him for his hunky role on “All My Children.” These three giving and talented actors deserve better. Actually most actors deserve better.

As they were all on stage for the final applause, I said quietly to them from my seat, “Don’t worry. You’ll get better shows.”

They sure couldn’t do much worse.

Juliet: A Dialogue about Love

Just heard from Melissa Hawkins that she’s doing her beautiful one-woman play, Juliet, at 6 p.m. Feb. 10 at Christ Church in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago. The address is 625 Hillside Ave. DONATIONS ONLY. Talk-back session after the show. For information, call (708) 209-0183.

Here’s the review I wrote after seeing it last summer at the Fringe Festival.

Melissa Hawkins’s performance in the involving story of one woman’s faith, courage and love should not be missed. For 90 minutes, alone on a nearly bare stage, she brings to life the story of Juliet Visky who spent five years in a prison camp in the Danube delta following the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Her crime? Being the wife of a Hungarian Reformed pastor in what had become a Communist country. He was arrested and sentenced to 22 years in prison. She and their seven children were deported to a Romanian gulag 1,000 kilometers from their home.

This play was written by her seventh son, Andras, in one week of 18-hour days after a year of writer’s block. He then never changed a word. A program note describes it this way: “The play is an aggressive confrontation with an inactive God. The conversation follows her stream of consciousness, piling together the mosaic of her life to solve her current abandonment.”

Because of Hawkins’s powerful acting, I had no trouble following the play, in spite of its leaps in time. Her giftedness brings to life not only Juliet but her children, husband, the jailers and events of her life before imprisonment. She creates a Juliet who has a sense of humor -- when she sees her new lodging has no roof, she dryly comments that they have no need of a skylight -- a Juliet who talks and prays to God lovingly and who can also be angry with God.

Scenic designer Terrence McClellan enforces the gloom of Juliet’s plight with his nearly empty stage and lighting designers Ryan Breneisen and Andrew Dunning enhance the mood with their shadings of light and dark.

The only thing I would suggest changing would be to cut the work to 75 minutes. Tightening it would strengthen the tension. It is remarkable, though, that Hawkins could sustain such intensity for the full, uninterrupted 90 minutes. She never once slipped from her character or that world.

Only two more performances remain of “Juliet” in its current run at the New York International Fringe Festival. For information of these and on booking a performance, visit www.juliet-tour.com.

Mid-life

“When, one day in mid-life, one comes to doubt oneself, and all one’s relationships and commitments, and when the pain and anxiety of this dragging away of . . . energy from all that formerly was so life-giving begins to overwhelm, there surfaces the depth question: Why bother? Lucky the one who lets that question stand. . . That question is a prayer.”
-- Janice Brewi and Anne Brennan Mid-life

Wounded Warriors find healing

I wrote this feature for the Jan. 25 issue of NCR. Hope you enjoy it.

Linda Ysewyn didn’t realize she needed healing. A minor jaw injury sustained while she was in the army was now just “a nagging injury” and she had moved on into a life as a middle school math teacher. But when she saw a tiny press release in The Army Times for a theatre school’s writing program for vets, something inside her knew that’s exactly what she needed.

She had been trained to fight as part of the 101st division in Desert Shield/Storm, but that hadn’t prepared her for the “spirit of death” she faced during her 10 months in the Middle East.

“All of a sudden something happens,” she said during a telephone interview from her home in Fairfax, VA. “It’s the reality that you’re killing people or are part of that chain that’s killing people. In the military you’re told that you’re defending democracy, but then we realize you’re pursuing other humans or, as the military likes to say, ‘targets’. You’re not necessarily mentally prepared for that to happen.”

Helping to heal those psychological wounds is what the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped’s Writers’ Program for Wounded Warriors is all about. Jesuit Brother Rick Curry, NTWH founder and artistic director, decided four years ago he wanted to use his theatre program to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical and psychological wounds, but he didn’t know how. It was while meeting with vets who were recent amputees that Brother Curry, 64, who was born without a right forearm, found his way.

“As went around, I found each one was desperate to tell their story,” he said during a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where he is finishing his studies for the priesthood. “I realized we could teach them to write, to get them up in Maine with other disabled people. It’s the communal aspect that’s important.”

Belfast, Maine, is the site of NTWH’s summer arts program; its base is in Manhattan. It was in Maine that Major Ysewyn learned to share her story through writing and then present it to an audience.

“You go there as you are and are offered an opportunity to use theatre and narrative to explore or act it out,” she said. “When you leave, you’re a little more whole. The whole aspect of the arts makes people alive again. They (NTWH) start the healing process from the inside and work out.”

The program costs $5,000 for the 10-day session; each veteran attends on complete scholarship, including air travel. Next summer three workshops with 20 people in each will be held. So far between 30 and 40 vets have completed the program.

“They need new tools of communication and to see there is a possibility of joy after disability, there is a life they can share and contribute to instead of being perpetual victims,” Brother Curry says. “If we don’t stress the life of the spirit we’re going to have another Vietnam, a lost generation.”

Major Ysewyn had studied percussion and played in her high school band, but at that time it was a social outlet, not an emotional one. She found her way into the military while at Bryant College in Smithfield, RI. Needing an elective and wanting to avoid 8 a.m. or Friday classes, she signed up for military science. She then took other electives in the field and heard military personnel talk about the benefits of their career.

“Before I knew it, I was entrenched in the military program,” she said. “It was almost a fluke of needing an elective. It seemed whimsical at the time, a way to depart college and not work in a little cubicle from nine to five.”

She decided to leave the army before she could be redeployed and possibly injured physically. She got a graduate degree in education and was going on with her life when she saw the notice about the writing program, which she has attended twice.

“It sounded like an opportunity to open up and express myself,” she said. “It’s the first time I personally stumbled into the arts as an emotional tool or outlet.”

The process involves having students write their stories during the 10 days, guided by students from prestigious writing programs at Columbia and N. Y. U. At the end of that time they read their narratives from the school’s stage to an audience eager to listen; realizing they have a story and then finding someone to listen to it is crucial, Brother Curry says.

Major Ysewyn said every aspect of the program was healing, from the relaxed mealtimes with others students and the staff, to the structured days of classes.

“I don’t know how they do it,” she says. “Within 10 days it’s ‘Hi, welcome aboard’ to ‘Hi here’s our show.’”

She hadn’t expected to find any commonality with her former life.

“In the military there’s such discipline, anything in the arts seems 180 degrees out of it, but then you find work in the arts is discipline. That’s why there’s such success and loyalty from the folks who go there.”

Having developed skills from that discipline, Ysewyn is now working on a play about her parents.

“What NTWH helps people do is stop and think about what they’ve done and more or less accept it. It let’s the person know that one day they’ll be on top of their life again. You have to go through the grieving process and the program really helps.”

Related web site
National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped
www.ntwh.org

Tina Howe

I am so excited that Tina Howe will have a new play premiering next year. I’ve interviewed her several times, did my second master's thesis on her and her work and taught her plays one summer at Brooklyn College. It’s been a long time since she’s had a new work on stage here in New York, not since “Pride’s Crossing” in the late 90s. Last season we were lucky to have “Birth and Afterbirth,” a very old play that I had read but never seen because it had never been staged in New York. Now a whole new play. It’s about time!

I have so much respect for Tina as a writer and a person. She is down-to-earth and accessible, and her plays are SO funny, and moving at the same time. I’m really looking forward to “Chasing Manet,” which will star Jane Alexander, a friend of Tina’s since their college days. Primary Stages describes the play this way: "A rebellious painter from a distinguished family in Boston and an ebullient Jewish woman with a huge, adoring family form an unlikely bond. Inside the confining walls of Mount Airy Nursing Home, the two plot an escape to Paris aboard the QE2. But can they possibly pull it off amidst the chaos of their surroundings? The tension and comedy grow as they struggle to take wing for the last time."

That’s interesting considering Tina and Jane spent a year together in Paris after they graduated from college. It was there Tina fell in love with the absurdist plays of Samuel Beckett, which would go on to influence much of her work.

The way I happened to teach her plays came from some advice from another professor at Brooklyn College. I was going to be teaching the dreaded required course in research paper writing. I was told to mold the course around something that interested me and so I chose theatre, with the emphasis being on Tina Howe’s plays. The students had never heard of Tina and some had never even read or seen a play. Tina, as you might know, is a WASP who writes about that world; the students were mostly immigrants and minorities. Not only were plays foreign to them, so was the subject matter of the ones they would be reading all summer.

It turned out, though, to be a perfect fit. A common theme in Tina’s plays is failure to communicate, with characters talking at cross purposes and growing increasingly frustrated at not being listened to. My students could understand that. They “got it” right away. We used Coastal Disturbances, the anthology that included that play as well as “Museum,” “The Art of Dining” and “Painting Churches.” I never had any trouble getting them to volunteer to read out loud in class, taking the parts of characters whose lives on the surface were so different from theirs. I loved listening to them, the Russian, Dominican, Polish and other assorted accents melding together into a wonderful -- transformational -- experience of theatre. I arranged for them to see an off, off-Broadway production of “Museum,” so some had their first experience of live theatre. Tina lent me her copy of the PBS recording of “Painting Churches,” the play that put her on my radar screen when I saw it at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE in the mid-80s, and we watched that together over two classes.

To put Tina’s plays in context, I also had them read the Arts & Leisure section of the NYT each week (and taught them how to look for the Ninas in the Hirschfeld drawings). When they read an article about Beckett one week and learned that he was an absurdist, they said: “Like Tina.” I told that to Tina and she laughed. Beckett was her inspiration, but to them he was like Tina. She had become their point of reference for all theatre.

It had been a long, hot summer in an unair conditioned classroom on the top floor under the roof -- extra hot -- and they actually did have to write a research paper, and I had to teach that dry stuff, but they were so involved in the subject matter they didn’t mind. They made intelligent comments and comparisons of Tina’s plays. I told them they were now Tina Howe scholars, that not many people knew as much about her as they did. They seemed really proud about being scholars of something.

On the last day of class they told me how much they loved the course and how much they had been dreading it beforehand. I confessed I felt the same way. It turned out to be a good summer, and the most enjoyable teaching experience I ever had. All because of that little bit of advice, to choose something I liked.

I definitely do like Tina Howe plays, and I look forward to this new one.