TheaterWork's Painting Churches
(out
of 
)Mark S.P. Turvin
(home office) (602) 912-0117
I can be reached for comment via e-mail at: mspt@goldfishpublishers.com
Reviewed 8/22/98
(out
of )Tina Howe is a gem. She is one of the more popular women playwrights that is able to speak not just of women and their relationships, but of humanity on many different levels. Ms. Howe manages to be subtle, witty, insightful, and sentimental at various turns, yet never forgets the importance of blending each of these together in equal amounts to create a family portrait that is personal, yet universal all at once. A perfect example of this is her three-person comedy-drama Painting Churches.
At the center of this play is the Church family. Though this is not your typical middle American family, the problems that they face are relevant to all. The patriarch, Gardner Church, is a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet at the end of an extensive career. He can still quote Blake with the best of them, but he is slipping mentally, and falling to the ravages of old age. Running the show is Fanny Church, a stalwart matriarch who has ruled her family with an iron fist and a prim, New England abrasiveness and charm. Returning to Beacon Hill from her successful painting career in New York City is Margaret Church, the only daughter who is on the edge of her own great artistic success. She is taking stock of her life and background while helping her parents pack up her childhood home and all the while trying to paint their portrait. As the play moves between packing, oratory, painting and cocktails, it begins to probe deeper into the animosities, resentments and misunderstandings of the Church family, an unhappy but necessary exploration.
Director Lynne Ormandy has managed to balance this show via casting, but not in the way she may have intended. Spectacular performances come from Dina Kay as the confused and resentful Margaret and Jock McNeill as the lion-in-winter Gardner, balanced by an abrasive and undermining performance of the strong-willed Fanny by Rosemary Campbell. Ms. Ormandy has also mixed her directorial pacing of the show, generally with solid effect, though occasionally, as in the oddly timed opening monologue by Ms. Campbell, in a way that is counterproductive to the script and characters. The result is an above-average production with several inexplicable lapses that prevent this from being a perfectly tuned show.
Kudos go to Ms. Kay, who recognizes that her character is generally more unspoken or inferred than direct. Ms. Kay walks a difficult tight-rope, doing a great job of reflecting her characters reserved New England upbringing and her adult revolt against it. Her quietly needling way is just as accurately expressed as her subsequent emotional trial after the layers have been stripped away from her memories.
Also wonderful is Mr. McNeill, who brings across Gardner's tenacity and sudden child-like innocence in balanced and believable ways. This is not an easy character to portray, since it calls for so many different peaks and swings, but Mr. McNeill does them all without drawing attention to the mechanics of the movements, an impressive plus. We see Gardner at his highest and his lowest, and reality is never stretched too far by Mr. McNeill in the process.
The only disappointing performance comes from Ms. Campbell, who brays like a donkey when angered and acts flighty and flip without imbuing any emotional sensibility to the character. Her shrill voice, a forced and wandering accent that is just as often Charelston as Boston, and her overly-odd ways take away from the character, which is bad because she needs all of the sympathy she can get due to her already questionable ways. One can only assume that an uneven mixture of mischaracterization and misdirection have caused this integral role to become lost in translation.
Thom Gilseth has done a solid job recreating the sitting room of a posh Beacon Hill home, right down to the purple glass in the windows. Kevin Cleere's light design is effective, right down to the perfectly timed window-lighting sequence. Laura Durant's sound design is also solid, despite a few cueing mishaps during the evening.
Surprisingly, some audience members left in the middle of the
performance. Granted, the subject matter is not a totally happy
one, i.e. the decline of one's parents through aging, though it
may be a bit closer to home and a soft spot for the Sun Cities
residents. This play is not brutally frank, but Ms. Howe doesn't
try to soften the blows of her commentary. Despite the single
disappointing performance, this play is a worthy exploration of
a topic most of us will face, and a worthwhile evening of theatre.
Production Details:
Painting Churches by Tina Howe
TheaterWorks, Peoria
815-7930
August 21st-September 6th, 1998