Review: A PECULIAR CROSSROADS: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND ART OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR at the Silver Meteor Gallery

"When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures." --Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor changed my life. It was February of 1982, and I was nineteen, a freshman in college. For my English class, I was forced to read a story by this Southern author with an Irish name. I didn't feel like reading it, and I procrastinated for as long as I could. I finally decided to get it over with while doing laundry in the basement of my dorm; I had nothing better to do. So I begrudgingly opened my literature book to the story I had to endure ("Revelation"), and the world changed in that instant.

It would be an understatement to say that I was immediately hooked. It was one of the most frightening, quirky, outrageous and hilarious stories I had ever read. Although "read" is too tame a term; O'Connor was so descriptive, and her sentences by themselves works of art, that her writings are to be "experienced" rather than merely "read." I sat there in that laundry room and realized that I was in the presence of something bigger and brighter than greatness; I was in the presence of grace. I read the story again, in awe of this "Flannery O'Connor" person. Here she was, an authentic voice of the South, uncompromising in her views, and afterwards I wound up devouring virtually everything she had ever written.

She would become my go-to author, the one I would cherish and hold nearest my heart.

Although O'Connor's novels are powerful, her short stories are where her genius reigns. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Good Country People," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "Parker's Back" are up there with her "Revelation" as the finest short stories written in America (don't worry, all votes for Raymond Carver's works will also be counted). Any unflinching religious woman who is cherished by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and John Waters (yes, John Waters!) must be special. "Flannery O'Connor, you're the tops," Waters once wrote. "Anybody who wrote of being so obsessed with collecting chickens that she actually made clothes for them is A-OK with me."

It's shocking that O'Connor's works have rarely shown up on the little screen, the big screen or the stage. A tepid Hollywood version of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" appeared on TV in the late 1950's (starring Gene Kelly). An effective re-telling of her first novel, Wise Blood, hit the screens in 1979, directed by John Huston and starring a wild-eyed Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes, preacher of The Church of Truth Without Christ ("where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way"). And a play (as well as a PBS special) based on O'Connor's stories entitled The Displaced Person was produced many decades ago.

For quite some time, I have thought O'Connor's life would make a terrific one-woman show. Thankfully, Kerry Park of Austin, Texas, thought the same thing and actually created one. She used the letters and writings of O'Connor found in Mystery and Manners and The Habit of Being to create "Flannery O'Connor: A One-Woman Play," all of it based 100% on O'Connor's own words. And now we in the Bay Area are lucky that Silver Meteor Gallery is producing the play as the centerpiece of A PECULIAR CROSSROADS: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND ART OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR. Even if you don't know O'Connor or her works, you won't want to miss it.

A PECULIAR CROSSROADS stars Betty-Jane Parks as the witty, fervently religious and doomed-to-die-young O'Connor, perhaps the greatest of all Southern writers. Parks doesn't just play the role; she inhabits it. She certainly looks the part of the writer. Her Southern accent isn't as pronounced as O'Connor's (the audience would need an interpreter if that happened to be the case), but she catches her witticisms, her unwavering belief system and, most importantly, her humor. She's funny and yet, although O'Connor's circumstances are tragic (she died of Lupus at the age of 39), she's quite strong, writing in bed up to the end, too sick to sit at the typewriter.

O'Connor knows she's a great writer, and Parks knows she has a homerun of a part here. The actress is simply stunning. So real, so strong in the face of adversity, so alive. You can see the physical downturn in O'Connor's life, as she finds herself walking slower and slower due to her disease. But you see the spark remaining in her eyes, the spark that wrote all of those tremendous stories. It's a triumph, breathtaking in the ability to capture the life of writer, dead over 50 years, and to bring her back to life.

O'Connor's faith is at the heart of A PECULAIR CROSSROADS, as if should be. "I write the way I do because I am a Catholic," she says. "Not though I am a Catholic."

Kerry Park's script is short, maybe too short; O'Connor is so interesting that we yearn for more. I would like to have heard more about Milledgeville, even more about her unwavering faith, digging deeper into the O'Connor mystique. A PECULIAR CROSSROADS is more than a Cliff Notes version of her life, but not by much. We could spend the entire evening with this amazing writer. And that's a compliment when a show leaves you wanting more. I just wanted much more because what is there is so powerful, especially in the likable hands of Ms. Parks.

Knowing that the play is rather short, approximately 60 minutes in length, you can stay afterwards for a showing of "Do You Reverse?", a brief Pathe newsreel from 1932 featuring 5-year-old Flannery O'Connor and her backwards walking chicken, as well as the TV version of "The Life You Save" that is mentioned in the play.

Landon Green's lighting is appropriate and his direction is inspired; O'Connor's movement throughout is seamless, utterly natural, and the director lets Ms. Parks' talent shine. Michael A. Murphy's set design works perfectly for the Silver Meteor space. My family is from a small Georgia town, and O'Connor's Milledgeville bedroom resembles my grandmother's, right down to the ghostly curtains. Murphy has also done his homework, and various vintage magazines, including one (Holiday) with an actual article on O'Connor, litter the set. There's even a Sears catalogue (mentioned in the play) as well as a copy of The Shoes of the Fisherman on a nightstand. It does matter where you sit in the space, because some seats are better than others, but sit where you can, or stand in the back if all the seats are taken, so you do not miss Ms. Parks' performance.

If I had to the ability to invite 10 people in all of history to join me for dinner, one of them would most certainly be Flannery O'Connor. It's tragic that she died so young and that I would never have the chance to tell her how much she and her writings have meant to me. I would love it if she had lived a long Welty-like life, but she didn't. So having Ms. Parks onstage as Flannery, inhabiting the soul of this amazing author, is the next best thing.

A PECULIAR CROSSROADS: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND ART OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR plays at the Silver Meteor Gallery in Ybor City until August 30th. For tickets, please call (813) 300-3585.

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