Review: Angelica Page Brilliantly Lives Out Her Mother's Life and Career in TURNING PAGE

Turning Page/by Angelica Page/directed by Wilson Milam/Moth Theatre/CLOSES its workshop run tonight Friday, January 27

Angelica Page stands quietly stage left and watches a home movie of herself on a giant rear screen. She sees a seemingly innocent little girl running around and playing with her mother Geraldine Page. When the film is over, she steps forward ever so slowly into the spotlight and addresses the audience fearlessly, "My mother is haunting me." At that precise moment, we sense we are in good hands. The family talent assuredly has rubbed off on Angelica Page, and we are in for a brilliantly honed theatrical evening.

She states quite emphatically up top that she has no writing talent and is not the one to pen her mother's memoir, but...she can channel her - when she is onstage - and admits to accepting the challenge, "I have finished the first draft." From there, utilizing wigs, turbans, shawls, body draperies... and sunglasses, Angelica as Geraldine takes us back to Missouri during the Great Depression where she was born into a Methodist family. This is a long segment describing her osteopath father who drank and read her biographies of famous people and her mother Pearl who prepared overcooked meat and grey peas for dinner and died of colon cancer...never stimulating Geraldine until, on her deathbed, whispered a big secret in her daughter's ear, that they were related to Edgar Allan Poe. It is this over,the.top dramatic presentation with voice and body where Angelica captures the Geraldine Page that we all came to love...the grande gestures that made many call her the greatest American actress of her time.

(photo credit: Ty Donaldson)

Needless to say, Geraldine couldn't wait to leave the mid-west to make her way to New York, The Actors Studio and off-Broadway and Broadway ventures such as Summer and Smoke, Sweet Bird of Youth and her associations with Jimmy Dean, Paul Newman and of course her third husband, Rip Torn. She talks briefly about her first marriage to a man who remains nameless. He committed suicide early on and afterwards Geraldine in her loneliness contemplated killing herself. As she stood on the ledge of a high building preparing to jump off, she looked down and noticed a woman pushing a cart filled with deliciously fresh oranges. In that split second it hit her how much beauty she would be missing if she took her life. She had a thirst for living and for works like The Immoralist in 1953 with Jimmy Dean. This was an experience she would never forget onstage or off. The director was bent on firing him due to his constant demand for script changes and unsettling behavior, and out of love for him and his brilliance, Geraldine threatened to walk with him. Of course, the play went on, as did Geraldine to acclaim and eventual triumph.

It is ultimately rewarding how Angelica puts herself into the script throughout her young life and has Geraldine address her at various points, encouraging her to become an actress. She mentions how she attended Agnes of God many times in 1982 and was starting to become hooked. A terribly funny incident during the run of this play occurred when Amanda Plummer came too close to Geraldine onstage. She slapped her, and Amanda gave a more riveting performance than ever that evening. Elizabeth Ashley, who played the psychiatrist, came to Geraldine's dressing room later, got down on her knees and begged her, "Slap me tomorrow night!" Geraldine considered herself a Broadway actress who wanted once and a while to do a film, not the other way around as with many actresses. Her belief was "If art is my religion, the stage is my altar and the communication between the audience and the actor is God."

She hated the glamour of Hollywood, the clothes, the makeup and some of the stars like John Wayne with whom she did Hondo and whom she recalls without fondness as a "reactionary, right-wing bigot". It took eight Oscar nominations for her to finally win for The Trip to Bountiful, for which she was paid a meager salary, but Carrie Watts was a stellar unforgettable character role.

Angelica spends a great deal of time in Turning Page on Gerry's illnesses, including bad kidneys as well as a disintegrating heart. This is not for sympathy, but to attest to her zest for living, for performing live. When told that she would die if she took another play, she confessed she wanted to work regardless. She always believed that "beginning the work allows others to dream." The mission of a great artist! She did die, in fact, in 1987 during the run of Blithe Spirit, but did not disappoint her audiences up to that point.

On another more personal note, Angelica presents her mother's suffering through her last tempestuous marriage to her father Rip Torn. Although Geraldine did not live in Hollywood, it's as if that marriage were torn from the pages of a tabloid, with Torn's mistress living in the same house and Geraldine learning in a rag that the apprentice, as she was euphemistically referred to, was pregnant with his child. Good sex or not, that was the last straw, and they split.

(photo credit: Carol Rosegg)

What gives Turning Page its edge, apart from skilled writing and fine direction from Wilson Milam, is the uncanny performance from Angelica Page. To say that she inhabits her mother's skin is an understatement. She doesn't look a lot like Geraldine, but in the right wig and with sunglasses on, and affecting that fantastically quizzical and theatrical voice, it's as if the first Miss Page were reincarnated. Angelica knows when to pause and how to savor the moments; she appreciates and feels her mother's low points better than anyone, so who better to write about her and play her? She's phenomenal. For anyone who loves the theatre, go and see Turning Page when it plays off-Broadway in the very near future. You are in for a rare treat, a jarring, enriching and totally enjoyable experience with Miss Angelica Page.

To post a comment, you must register and login.