Also this issue:

Learning to Fly
Shelley Spector chats about her life, her art and her upcoming show.
-Robin Rice

Boxed In
In a story of a con man turned boxer, Darin Strauss loses sight of the core of truth.
-Justin Bauer

First Friday Focus
The Galleries at Moore | Temple Gallery | Ashley Gallery
-Lori Hill

Blind Date
Two artists are grouped together for an exhibit at Seraphin Gallery.
-Robin Rice

East Meets Midwest
Wisconsin artist T.L. Solien is featured in two gallery shows this month.
-Susan Hagen

June 6-12, 2002

theater

Nifty Watercolored Memories

chat room: (L-R) Lenny Daniels, Ceal Phelan, Carla Belver, Scott Boulware and Alda Cortese.

by Toby Zinman

³Life is short.”

“Then how come we’ve been alive so long?” That paradox is at the heart of He Held Me Grand, a new play by James Still having a lovely first production at People’s Light under the direction of David Bradley.

It begins with an old woman asleep in a chair. Characters emerge from behind the living room walls and dance around her. It is New Year's Eve, 1899. A little girl appears in her nightgown and excitedly asks her parents about the new century, "What's going to happen?" That little girl was the old woman's mother, and the play answers her question.

This profoundly American drama is filled with both nostalgia and optimism, looking backwards and forwards as its complicated structure gathers a family together: Jesse, a young man, drives from Los Angeles to the old family house in Indianapolis to visit the grandmother he has never met. Then his two great aunts show up -- one is a worrier, one an adventurer. Their shell-shocked brother sings and dances through the house from time to time. There's a feisty next-door neighbor and the neighbor's devoted middle-aged daughter. There's Henry, an elderly beau (he's 93) who courts April (she's 88) on the Internet, signing his e-mails, "2OLD4U."

Further crowding the household are many characters who exist in the memories of all these people; they lurk in potential throughout the play, half visible behind the translucent walls. When they emerge, we see fragments of the past, as scenes contain both the present moment and the remembered moment, a theatrical device that perfectly conveys both the perpetual presence in living minds of people long dead, or selves long gone. It shows us the way those memories can ambush you in the middle of a sentence. There are mothers and grandmothers and boyfriends and soldiers -- so many soldiers; although there were many wars in the 20th century, WWII emerges as the pivotal event in these lives. One of the finest (and bravest) moments in the play is when Buddy, then 20, kisses June, now 80, and we feel again, with her, the young woman she was when he kissed her and the old woman she is who is remembering.

Inevitably -- this is a family drama, after all -- there are revelations (perhaps too many revelations for one play to accommodate). But the interweaving of the personal with the public is both clever and realistic; a woman's recurring nightmare is a metaphor for racism, and the images in it are shaped by an event--a Ku Klux Klan parade -- which we have seen her witness in an earlier memory scene. And if Still occasionally slips into the didactic, especially in the scenes with the children, we can hope this will be edited out as the script develops.

The old ladies are terrific. All four actors create fully individualized people: Ceal Phelan as April whose life has been mainly caretaking; Carla Belver as May who is unhappy and panicky; Alda Cortese as June who is defensively wild and Cathy Simpson as Grace, the neighbor who is funny and strong. Tom Teti, as their dancing brother, creates splendid moments of intensity and befuddlement.

But this show requires a huge cast (by contemporary theatrical standards), and requires ensemble work of the highest order to show us the spectrum of intimacy, ranging from lifelong friendships to sisters to new lovers. It is a pleasure to be able to say that everybody rises to the occasion, with special kudos to Scott Boulware, Lenny Daniels, Mets James Suber and The Twins from Terre Haute: Susan McKey and Mary Elizabeth Scallen.

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