Theater Review - Saint Maybe
Saint Lucy’s Eyes not big enough for Ruby Dee
The leading role of Bridgette Wimberly’s play Saint Lucy’s Eyes is known only as “Grandma,” and she’s at once an archetypal figure and a richly specific character. In the Alliance Theatre’s production she’s brought to life by Ruby Dee, a near-legendary actress in her own right.
With such a pairing of player and part, you expect Saint Lucy’s Eyes to be a theatrical experience as deep and rewarding as a novel, and it’s a little disappointing when the play proves closer in scope to a short story. Directed by Billie Allen, Saint Lucy’s Eyes bravely addresses difficult subject matter, even though the work lacks the sense of scale and event that the casting leads you to expect.
The action begins with a teenage woman (Toks Olagundoye) arriving at Grandma’s Memphis apartment on a stormy night in 1968. At first the reason for the visit is a mystery, with the girl paying Grandma $50 to alleviate some kind of unspoken problem. With her earthy manner and “motherwit,” Grandma comes across like the beloved community midwife, but we gradually realize that she’s the exact opposite, performing illegal abortions for young African-American women in trouble.
The skittish girl leaps at thunderclaps and blurts that she’s terrified that God will punish her for committing murder. Grandma scoffs that she’s the one doing the killing, and slowly reveals that she terminates pregnancies as a means of giving young women a future. Pro-choice audiences may nevertheless react with horror when Grandma unfolds a newspaper and lays it across the central table, where the procedure will take place.
We see different facets of Grandma in extended scenes with her “old man” Bay (Roger Robinson), a Memphis garbage man participating in the sanitation strike led by Martin Luther King: We see his placard “I AM A MAN” leaning against the wall. When Bay’s present, Saint Lucy’s Eyes feels worthy of August Wilson, with King’s peripheral presence giving Bay and Grandma’s lives an historical context.
As Bay, Robinson has a cantankerous manner, a voice like a cement mixer and an amusing awkwardness when he dances around in a white T-shirt. But he’s more than a comic relief role, as he reveals the dignity of an aggrieved working-man as well as genuine affection for Grandma, whom he fears will earn the enmity of the law.
The second act leaps forward a decade, with Grandma helping another woman (the striking Karan Kendrick), who happens to be staying at the same Memphis motel where King was assassinated. Abortion is now legal, but the woman fears going past the picketers. Grandma laughs and explains the protesters’ racial agenda: “You ain’t who they trying to keep out! I’m surprised they don’t hand you a lollipop going in.”
Throughout, Dee proves to be a casually commanding player and her voice has a rough musicality, with almost a sing-song rise and fall. As Grandma, she’s seldom sentimental, yet she’s so vivid that she got surprisingly big laughs in the first scene, despite the fraught situation. At times she gives Grandma some absent-minded stammering, as if the elderly woman is reaching for her words. (Or it may be that the actress herself hit some bumps in recalling her lines, and has a superb way of covering it.)
Grandma reaps what she’s sown by the play’s end, paying a price for her illegal work but also seeing the good that’s come of it. But the script’s construction feels too symmetrical, with the first and final scenes both ending with the self-conscious-sounding line: “It ain’t gonna rain no more.” Saint Lucy’s Eyes leaves you wondering about the levels of the drama that have gone unexplored, making you wish for another character or additional scene, anything to provide more time with Grandma.