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Went and saw Telling Lives at Dobama a few weeks back; Super Bowl Sunday, to be precise. Written by Faye Sholiton several years back and then dusted off, revised, updated, re-written, pick you choice phrase, and presented in the Playwrights’ Gym. Telling Lives is a strong piece of writing and a fine piece of theater.

Telling Lives adeptly and gracefully tells the story of three generations of women in the Garver/Klein family. Appropriately, what is most telling about the relationship between each woman is what isn’t said at all. It is clear from the start that years of tension and unsaid things have left each woman defensive, guarded, and isolated, and we, as an audience, will bear witness to either the terrible destruction of these women or the reversal of their fortunes.

The matriarch of the family is Ruth Garver (Rhonda Rosen), an older woman who is teetering on the edge of both decline and intervention. Living alone, she is forgetful and moving ever closer to the point at which she cannot take care of herself. It is, presumably at the start, this aspect of her life that leads her to write an autobiography, which becomes a lightning rod. Ruth’s daughter, Geri Klein (Maryann Elder) is an editor at a newspaper and the ex-wife of a now highly successful fiction writer. These two facts alone allow for the edge of cynicism we see in her, but she has also been scarred and hardened by other relationships in her life: notably with her daughter, her mother, her father, and her dead sister. Geri’s daughter, Rachel, (Emily Pucell) is a rebellious thirty-something playwright who has taking to airing the family misfortunes through her stage plays. Finally, we learn that it is Rachel, who’s desire to air more dirty laundry on stage, prodded the matriarch, Ruth, to write her autobiography. The main intent, it seems, is to discover what happened to her dead aunt and the reason for it. Again, Sholiton adeptly brings the play to a dramatic head by having the autobiography be more problematic for what has been left out, rather than what has been put in it. Coupled with this, is the natural instinct that Geri has, being an editor, to correct, cut, revise, and goad her mother into revisions–which Ruth does not want to make.

Ultimately, the mystery that surrounds the autobiography and the secret related to the dead aunt/sister/daughter is a MacGuffin to expose and examine what is most important in this play: the way in which family members relate to one another: how they hurt each other, recover, and how they love each other.

Sholiton has written a wonderful play with strong characters who are witty, vibrant, and delightful to watch.

Saw this on the last night it was up at Dobama.  It was alright.  The cast and direction was very good, but the play itself was a little up and down. 

For me, the opening scene of the second act saved the play.  I was nearly ready to leave after the first act and several people that I know who were in attendance did leave.  I also saw two people sleeping (of course, this could have as much to do with the aging of the audience as the play itself).  The first act was almost entirely exposition.  That is really what dragged the thing down.  The second act saved the play because it took advantage of the painstakingly laid ground work of the first.

There were some intriguing interludes, where Felix Humble (Andrew Cruse) has a sort of twilight cranial experience that conjures his dead father.  But these were few.  The whole play reminded me of a collision between Proof, by David Auburn, and Hay Fever, by Noel Coward.  That is, it has the whole self-righteous young, brilliant, diffident intellectual child who can’t get out of the shadow of a dead father (and in Felix Humble’s world a strong willed, overbearing, selfish mother)–whose ghost appears in the play; as well as the flighty, ferociously French-scened encounters with screwball family members, neighbors, friends, etc.  The play is periodically funny and periodically witty.  I don’t think it accomplishes what it wants.  I, for one, wasn’t affected by it–in the sense of having any profound revelation or connecting to the characters in any deeply, meaningful way.  After the first act I wanted to swat Felix every time he stuttered.

The characters were well-drawn and believable: smart, unbelievably stupid and frustrating, funny, vulnerable, assertive, crazy–in short, like real people.  Greg Violand, as George Pye, was terrific and without a doubt a scene stealer.  His rough, vulgar, enthusiastically funny Pye was like many men I know from Mount Vernon/Fredericktown where I grew up: unassuming, direct, rustic–the kind of guy who’ll drink a beer, tell a dirty joke, cut a fart, and then comment on the ass of the woman who just passed by.  Nevertheless, he was earnest and tried his best to win the heart of Flora Humble (Maryann Nagel), who did  a splendid job of portraying and imperious and unforgivingly bitter cougar.  I enjoyed seeing Laurel Johnson, as I always do (Rosie Pye); and Laura Starnik (Mercy Lott) did a wonderful job as Flora’s greatly abused friend–one diatribe in particular that was delivered through a five-minute meandering dinner grace was especially funny and earned great enthusiasm and applause.

There is much that writer Charlotte Jones put into the naming of characters and the themes/events of the play: Flora, Felix, Humble Pye, George (Georgie pordgie pudding and ), Rosie, Mercy lott, bumble bees, gardens, gardners, etc.: a virtual explosion of nursery rhymes and archetypal events–the lost father, oedipal difficulties of the son (Hamlet), unknown daughter, ghosts, etc.  I’m not really certain what it all added up to, though and unfortunately I’m not sure if Johnson does either.  The problem for me is that I don’t know if is supposed to be mysterious, or if she just wasn’t sure herself.

The set was great. It was the first time I had been in the newly constructed Dobama space on Lee Road.  I thought Joel Hammer did a great job of exploding the farcical points and ratcheting together a clearly talented cast.