Theater Review - Her-story lessons

“The soul selects her own society,/Then shuts the door;/On her divine majority/Obtrude no more.”

To paraphrase the timeless verse of Emily Dickinson, the one-person play definitely selects its own society. Instead of a divine majority of multiple actors, a single performer carries the weight of a solo show. The monologist alone must establish a rapport with the audience, convey the dramatic forces and make the “world” of the play feel credible.

With two very different souls on display, Theatre in the Square’s The Belle of Amherst and Actor’s Express’ When Something Wonderful Ends illustrate the challenges of the one-person show. Both offer intimate portrayals of potentially rich subjects who happen to be women. Belle takes an informative tour of the life and work of poet Emily Dickinson, while Wonderful playwright Sherry Kramer sorts through her childhood memories and present-day beliefs about geopolitics. Neither production talks down to its audience as it commits to thoughtful concepts comparable to the fabled castles in the air, but both plays stand on unsteady foundations as well.

The Belle of Amherst stars Holly Stevenson as a willful, passionate and utterly charming Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest and most fascinating poets despite her life of obscurity. Playwright William Luce contradicts Dickinson’s reputation as a spinsterish hermit. Dickinson comes across as a gracious hostess, greeting the audience members like old friends. She confides that she cultivates her role as an eccentric recluse by wearing “bridal white” and sending witty, cryptic notes to her neighbors.

Despite Stevenson’s peppery presence, the play feels uneventful as it chronicles a life in which not much “happened.” For nearly half the running time, Dickinson seems so content with her family and habits that there’s practically no dramatic tension. Director August Staub at times overemphasizes superficial business to enliven the show, like moving Stevenson out into the theater’s aisles or pointedly raising and lowering the lights to signal changes in mood.

Belle claims that Dickinson had more extensive romantic experiences than literature class usually suggests, but the details come across as frustratingly vague, as if extrapolated from incomplete sources. In one of Belle’s most compelling moments, Dickinson sends her poetry to an editor at the Atlantic Monthly, raising her hopes only to see her bitterly disappointed. It’s also a pleasure to hear Stevenson recite Dickinson’s verse throughout the play, particularly her powerful rendition of “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”

I’m not sure which actress has the greater challenge: Stevenson as she plays a real person who’s long-deceased, or Vicki Ellis Gray, who portrays Sherry Kramer, living actress and author of the deeply autobiographical When Something Wonderful Ends, directed by Freddie Ashley at Actor’s Express. As Sherry, Gray packs up her Barbie doll collection at her parents’ house following her mother’s death, her reminiscences about her mother forming the heart of the show. She also offers numerous digressions on the history of Barbie dolls and especially on the U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, from the early 20th century to the post-9/11, Iraq war period.

Sherry jumps from self-deprecating memories to angry editorials to trivia about Barbie clothes and America’s relationship to Iran in leaps that seem to follow her own intuitive internal logic. It’s like the way your own thoughts about current events can seep into your daily routine. The late actor/writer/performance artist Spalding Gray specialized in that kind of self-reflective, stylized storytelling in his monologues such as Swimming to Cambodia.

Wonderful feels like seeing a Spalding Gray-type monologue performed by somebody who didn’t write it. Vicki Ellis Gray proves perfectly credible in the role, as passionate about Barbie’s dream car as she is about American misbehavior abroad. But some personal connection seems to be missing between Gray and the material, or maybe Gray and the audience. She restrains herself from being aggressively chummy with the audience (which could’ve gotten old fast), but isn’t quite ingratiating enough for a show that relies less on compelling anecdotes than opinions and feelings.

Sherry’s tangents include some intriguing ideas, such as the premise that religious fundamentalist societies are organized “vertically,” between humans and their deities above, while secular ones have “horizontal” organization, with citizens interacting with one another. She builds up enormous indignation about American addiction to oil and past mistreatment of Middle Eastern countries. But when she snaps such lines as “Getting a Prius is not going to get you off the hook,” I felt like I was being brow-beaten, and I happen to agree with most of her politics.

When Something Wonderful Ends and The Belle of Amherst get credit for attempting to engage their audiences intellectually. Belle prompts us to listen closely to some classic verse and consider its origins, while Wonderful challenges us to reconsider our preconceptions of American life. The shows have a few faults, but underestimating our intelligence is not one of them.