BWW Reviews: Boiler Room Theatre's CRIMES OF THE HEART

Beth Henley's McGrath sisters of Hazelhurst, Mississippi - the heroines (or, perhaps, anti-heroines) of her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Crimes of the Heart - aren't so much archetypes as they are so much like any trio of Southern sisters you probably know. It's clear they love and adore one another, but they are also rather contemptuous of one another, their long-simmering resentments barely contained.

A favorite of theater audiences since its debut at the 1979 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Crimes of the Heart is given a faithful and elegantly staged revival at Franklin's Boiler Room Theatre. The play moves along at a languid pace befitting its setting and time period - and the story told by the playwright is as engrossing and as richly drawn as it ever was. Moreover, you are struck by the notion that Crimes of the Heart is, indeed, a timeless piece of Southern literature, claiming its rightful place among our region's most memorable prose.

Featuring a quartet of superb actresses as the three McGrath sisters and their overbearing first cousin Chick, the four women bring their characters to life with a sense of familial realism, creating an evening of theater that remains compelling and provocative, touching the heart while somehow refraining from any hint of overt sentimentality that would make the plight of the McGraths maudlin or, perhaps, even pathetic. Clearly, they are neither.

Director Pat Street directs her ensemble of six players - besides the four women, we meet two of the men in their lives - with a clearly focused vision, paying attention to the period details of the piece (which takes place in 1974) and paying close attention to Henley's script in order to deliver her project in fine style. You find yourself caught up in the story as you watch the three sisters sip Co'Cola from those little bottles (which, if I remember correctly, you could still buy for a nickel a bottle back then from a machine in my mama's doctor's office in Memphis), cracking pecans that were picked up out of somebody's yard, or making a pitcher of lemonade from ten whole lemons and at least two scoops of sugar.

It might be October 23 (my parents' 38^th wedding anniversary, just so's you know how easy it is for me to identify with these people), but there's still a sense of late summer unease permeating the air in Hazelhurst. The three McGrath sisters are reunited again because the youngest girl, Babe (Laura Thomas Sonn) stands accused of shooting her husband, the town's leading attorney and the state senator for Copiah County. Lenny (Melodie Madden Adams), who is celebrating her 30^th birthday, is the oldest girl and remains the family's retainer, caring for the aging Old Granddaddy, who's suffered a series of strokes and has been in the hospital for at least three months. Middle sister Meg (Evelyn Brush), the darkest hued of a family full of black sheep, comes home from California, upending the docile family unit back home with her unique blend of sisterly love and rampant self-absorption.

Old Granddaddy's other granddaughter Chick Boyle (Sondra Morton) lives next door, looking down on her "cheap Christmas trash" cousins, dripping disdain and consternation, still bristling at her own displacement by the trio of sisters when they came to live with their grandparents after their mama's suicide in Vicksburg some 16 years earlier. That suicide gained national attention, it is supposed, because the girls' mama also hung her old, yellow cat next to her when she decided she'd had more than enough bad days.

As far-fetched and contrived as the plot may sound, there is definitely the ring of truth and real-life to Henley's play that you can easily recognize and identify with if you are Southern. The traits that exemplify the characters' very Southern-ness - and claim thEm Lock, stock and barrel as ours - are exactly what sets them apart from the rest of the world. They may be crazy - well, crazy in a Mississippi Delta, mama's gonna iron in her slip all day while she watches her stories on the Sylvania, but she has to put on some eyeliner and lipstick if she goes to the Jitney Jungle kind of way - but they are infinitely precious members of our families, too.

Adams, Brush and Sonn bring their characters to life, fully formed onstage. There is a genuine sense of sisterhood among the three actresses, and that is essential to a thoroughly engaging and successful production of Crimes of the Heart, as this one most assuredly is.

Adams' Lenny is kind and earnest, which belies her own hidden desires and secret fears, and Adams plays her character with an understanding that is palpable. Her interactions with the other two actresses fairly crackle with an unresolved intensity that is perfect for Lenny. Adams possesses an innate grace that she somehow sublimates in order to show us Lenny's in-her-own-skin discomfort.

Brush's take on Meg is measured and controlled, allowing you a look at Meg's brash exterior, which masks her vulnerabilities. Meg is a difficult role to play; let's face it, she's selfish and bratty (not for nothing did she get 12 jingle bells sewn on her petticoats while her sisters each got three), but life hasn't been as easy for her as she'd have you believe. Brush intelligently and gracefully conveys her character's dichotomy in a performance that is at once showy and restrained.

Sonn plays Babe with a sense of wide-eyed innocence that allows her to exist in an abusive marriage while maintaining an outward image of small-town respectability. Sonn could easily reduce Babe to a cartoonish stereotype, but instead she invests her character with a genuinely felt warmth that makes her believable - and, in so doing, she makes Babe's predicament all the more harrowing.

Yet it's Sondra Morton who clearly threatens to steal the show from her co-stars, blowing in and out of her every scene with a heightened sense of entitlement and snobbery that can be found in every Southern belle since Scarlett snubbed that white trash Emmy Slattery or an escaped convict killed that woman who just wouldn't shut her mouth in Good Country People. Walking along the razor's edge of comportment that makes her portrayal of Chick all the more entertaining, Morton's confident performance is underscored by the actress' acute - and well-developed - notion of what's funny and what works best onstage.

The play's men, whose presence pales in comparison to the women in the piece, include Dave Shetler (who gives a fine, somewhat resolute, performance as Doc Porter, Meg's jilted lover, whose leg is all gimpy thanks to a roof caving in during Hurricane Camille in 1969 Biloxi), and Chris Basso (terrific as Babe's lawyer Barnette Lloyd, who's been carrying a torch for Babe since she sold him an orange pound cake at a Christmas bazaar a couple of years back and who has a vendetta against her controlling husband).

Jim Manning's set design for Crimes of the Heart perfectly captures the tone and feel of a kitchen in an old house in the Delta, providing the ideal backdrop for Henley's play. Manning, without doubt one of the hardest working men in Nashville show business, was seriously injured during the set's build and the fact that his vision for the set is realized so beautifully is credit to his expertly drawn plans for it - and the superb craftsmanship of Jacques Crist, Macon Kimbrough and Anthony Popolo.

Further, credit is due Jeni Waldrop for her exceptional properties design that outfits the kitchen with artistic detail. Janice Thomas' costume design clothes the women in styles that look as if they could have come hot off the racks at McRae's in 1974, and Sondra Morton's lighting design beautifully illuminates the onstage action.

- Crimes of the Heart. By Beth Henley. Directed by Pat Street. Presented by Boiler Room Theatre, Franklin. Through April 23. For further details, visit the website at www.boilerroomtheatre.com. For reservations, call (615) 794-7744.

Pictured: Melodie Madden Adams, Laura Thomas Sonn and Evelyn Brush (at top), with Sondra Morton (bottom)/photos by Rick Malkin

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