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Quicktake by Will Stackman
There are only eight more scheduled
performances of what may just be the best new play
put up this year. An earlier version of Kate Snodgrass'
"The Glider" was part of the Women on Top
Festival in 2002.
The current production, an intense ninety
minutes, features Laura Latreille, Birgit Huppuch,
and Kimberley Parker Green as three sisters gathered
on the porch of their family's boathouse overlooking
a lake in Michigan. Their mother has just died, and
family secrets, past and present come boiling to the
surface.
Wesley Savick has directed this superb
cast as a tight ensemble, including intense confrontations
with overlapping dialogue. Richard Chambers, now teaching
at Suffolk, has once again come up with an architectural
set full of intriguing detail. Rachel Padula-Shefelt
has costumed each of the three with care, enhancing
their characters. Haddon Kime
has provided atmospheric sound which enhances the
selective realism of the production.
But these three performers could probably
have the show work on a bare stage with a few essential
props and some chairs, though the porch glider of
the title would be missed.
In an ideal world, such a show would move somewhere
for an extended run. But Latreille will be heading
back to Canada, Huppuch down to New York, and Green
to Washington DC. This Chekovian drama will probably
been seen again in these parts, but this production
will be hard to beat. Avoid regret; get tickets now.
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Sisters take emotional ride on impressive `Glider'
By Terry Byrne Tuesday, November 2, 2004
Once in a while a play is written with such clarity
and performed with such transparency, it's possible
to forget you're in a theater and feel you're eavesdropping
on a real moment in someone's life. The Boston Playwrights'
Theatre production of Kate Snodgrass' new play, ``The
Glider,'' has achieved this impressive combination
of unaffected naturalism within the heightened reality
of the stage.
Everything comes together in this intimate family
drama, from the humor and heart of Snodgrass' dialogue
and Wesley Savick's precise direction of three superb
actresses to Richard Chambers' richly detailed set
and Haddon Kime's spooky sound
design.
The action takes place in the boathouse of the family
home (outfitted with exquisite props) on a lakeside
in Michigan. Almost immediately, Snodgrass creates
a tension between the lake's gentle beauty and its
dangerous, mysterious depths. That same tension, between
the surface appearances and the complicated emotions
hidden underneath, drives this taut and tender drama.
The plot traces the family ritual that follows
the death of a parent. Siblings gather to bicker,
banter, beg forgiveness and ponder the choices that
took them from the expectations for their lives to
the reality they're dealing with. In ``The Glider,''
three sisters have been reunited at the lake house
after their mother's death, and as one puts it, with
a wild laugh, ``sisters are like lemons - same genes,
different tart.''
Francesca (Laura Latreille), the family's black
sheep, left home at 18 and has spent the past 20 years
traveling the globe as a photographer for National
Geographic. Estella (Birgit Huppuch), clearly fearful,
has chosen what she thought was the safest path -
marriage and three children, including twin daughters
named Grace and Joy. Christina (Kimberly Parker Green),
the youngest, is considered long-suffering by her
sisters because she gave up her job and returned home
to care for their mother during her long illness.
The descriptions seem almost like cliches, but Snodgrass
skillfully disarms the audience and defies expectations.
She starts with easy humor, first with Fran alone
trying to reconcile herself to her mother's death
(with Latreille doing a wonderfully cocky but obviously
sad turn); then with Fran and Estella together sharing
family stories even as the obviously skittish Stel
(Huppuch crackles with a brittle madness) tries to
drop hints to Fran about what's coming. Finally, Christina
joins the party, and Green, with her remarkably low-key
delivery, transforms from the child everyone assumes
will take care of things, to a woman determined to
get what she wants, no matter what the cost.
The play unfolds with the easy rhythm of the glider,
that gently swinging couch on the boathouse porch
that becomes a haven for memories, and a place where
emotions can be easily released. With Savick's inspired
direction, the three sisters circle the glider like
animals stalking their prey, landing on it, backing
away, leaning over the back to make a point. Like
all siblings, they start out wanting to protect each
other, but as the evening wears on, assumptions are
shattered and the balance of power shifts from sister
to sister to sister.
Snodgrass doesn't resolve all the power plays or
the emotional ripples she creates. Instead, her characters
cling to us long after the play ends, and their struggles
continue to resonate with the insistent swinging of
the glider. |
