World Premiere of ‘The Messenger’ Boldly Probes the Complicity of Silence

 

Attention must be paid as one enters the Palm Beach Dramaworks theatre.  A stark white angular platform is set atop the stage with one sharp corner pointing directly towards the audience.  The entire set is bathed in white, a tabula rasa on which will be written the message of The Messenger.  PBD’s new Resident Stage Designer, Anne Mundell, has populated a corner with books and files, randomly placed and chaotically spilling onto the floor.  It is edgy, perplexing, inviting. 

 

PBD has always been known as a home for serious classic works, but Producing Artistic Director William Hayes has been moving the theatre towards innovative new plays with the logic that if regional theatres don’t produce such works, who will?  The Messenger was incubated in its Dramaworkshop.  Hayes has said he believes this is the “most important play ever produced at PBD and at the most appropriate time.”

 

Indeed, what transpires in the intermission-less 90 minutes bears out that statement, from the opening moment when a monolithic section of the wall opens bathed in bright light with ominous, deep musical tones (perhaps a hat tip to Kubrick’s 2001?) as the characters emerge representing the past, present, and possibilities of the future.

 

Although this is not a holocaust play per se, it finds its gravitas from the life of Georgia Gabor, a holocaust survivor, who immigrated to the US and later taught math in the San Marino Unified School District for two decades.  The persecution she suffered in her adopted community was a terrible addendum to her life, as well as its implications for society.  The Messenger pulls us into the central overarching issue, man’s inhumanity to man.  It is a play about persecution and how history seems destined to repeat itself.  It is about the consequences of being silent, especially in this social-network polluted world where those who “scream” loudest are generally those who perpetuate ethnic and racial persecution.

 

While it is a four-character play, Gabor’s story, played by PBD veteran Margery Lowe, is the only one based on a real person, with much of her dialogue coming from Gabor’s memoir My Destiny.  

 

Jenny Connell Davis, PBD new Resident Playwright imaginatively creates the other three characters from facts of different eras and designates years as their names to clarify where they place in the panoptic vision of the play.  All are women.  It is remarkable that she has been able to create characters that grow more and more real, ones the audience empathizes with, in a play which is essentially surreal and symbolic.

 

They are 1969, a curator at The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California; 1993, the mother of one of Gabor’s students; and 2020, a high school student and former volunteer at The Huntington.  Off stage character, Miley, a friend of 2020’s, shares this story as well.

 

Their episodic stories materialize out of time sequence and are kaleidoscopically woven into the fabric of Gabor’s experience. The actors pour their hearts into these stories, making poignant connections between then and now.

 

Angela Gulner, Gracie Winchester, Margery Lowe, Annie Fang; Photo by Alicia Donelan

The success of this world premiere is in large part due to Margery Lowe’s experience in appearing in new plays, especially at PBD.  It takes a special sensibility playing the lead where no one has gone before, to make the character interpretation one’s own.  Lowe has a special advantage playing Georgia Gabor as both are diminutive in stature but lions in spirit.  Lowe also had the advantage of being able to study Gabor when she was interviewed in 1984 by The 1939 Society. 

 

Lowe perfectly captures her character, and triumphs with Gabor’s words from her memoir although her Hungarian accent takes some acclimation to clearly understand.  Nevertheless, Lowe has reincarnated Georgia Gabor with her flirtatious mannerisms, her dynamic personality and stalwart resolve to tell her painful story over and over.

 

But it is what she experienced afterwards – again becoming a victim of anti Semitism in the wealthy community of San Marino CA. -- where Lowe’s performance provides a strong catalyst in moving the arc of the story.  The other characters’ develop into real people under her watchful eye, the ripple effects washing over the audience. 

 

Bill Hayes directs The Messenger.  His vision and his labor of love underscore his belief in the play and are borne out by this production.  His talented assistant director, Jessica Chen, whose background is in dance brings her eye for fluidity to the stage.  

 

Gracie Winchester plays 1969, capturing youth’s wide eyed wonder of working in the august Huntington Library, where possibly becoming a curator comes into conflict with her discovery that the Library harbors a dark secret, the original copy of the Nuremberg Laws, which was designed to deprive Jews of basic rights, signed by Hitler himself.  How did they come to the Huntington and why were they filed away, never displayed, forgotten?  1969 has to make a choice to reveal the facts, but perhaps at the expense of a cherished career.  Winchester makes you feel her character’s dilemma as well as her outrage, and sad capitulation, the playwright connecting the dots with 1969 appearing as a regretful old lady with a parasol in 2020’s era at “the Hunt.”

 

Angela Gulner makes her PBD debut as 1993, and gives a bravura performance of someone thinking she is doing the right thing as the antagonist, organizing a partition objecting to Gabor’s teaching.  As a parent we all know how we will go to extremes to guard one’s child.  But did she cross a line when she is the one that takes action to stop Gabor for inviting children to hear her survivorship stories after school (not a requirement)?  Gulner protests (“her history is not OUR history”).  She’s a math teacher!  She has no right to teach what should be left to historians!  Yet her moving performance elicits sympathy as well as being reminded of current events in our schools right now. 

 

Annie Fang, also making her PBD debut as 2020, deals with some of the emotional highlights of the play, particularly her relationship with the off stage Miley, who is a math genius, is certainly destined for a top school (the community’s raison d’être), and yet is more interested in art.  They are Asian Americans and during Covid were called “Chinks” while volunteering at the Huntington by the same kind of people who might hurl Jewish invectives at Gabor.

 

The incident blows up in social media, today’s ubiquitous Petri dish for scapegoating and persecution and 2020 tries to distance herself from the widely circulated video of Miley confronting her tormentor. Ultimately Miley suffers the ultimate consequence of silence.  As we can only see and feel Miley through 2020, Fang’s performance is particularly noteworthy.

 

It is an ingeniously written play by Jenny Connell Davis and director William Hayes manages the actors on the stage as they tell their overlapping stories, moving from shadows to light.  Portions reminded me of a Sondheim duet where counterpoint is featured.

 

As an abstract play, where characters may be moving from point A to B, more along a surrealistic path, Resident Lighting Designer, Kirk Bookman has challenging transitions, essential ones to keep the audience engaged.  Much of the time shadows are as important as lights up, as all characters are on stage throughout even if not engaged in their own particular part.

 

Bookman works in concert with Video Designer Adam J. Thompson.  Parts of the play are filled with projected videos, some falling on the actors themselves but mostly on the white walls, in particular videos of artistic compositions by Miley, and very moving to see them being created in real time.  Other projected images are disturbing though, such as the bombed out Ghettos which Gabor “lived in,” and symbols of hate that both Gabor and 2020 had to endure.  Overall, the video and the lighting of the show are even more integral than the typical play and kudos to Mr. Thompson and Mr. Bookman.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold is portending, even startling at times (gunshots), boot steps of the Hungarian Nazi sympathetic Arrow Cross Party, all in keeping with the dystopian theme of what Gabor endured, during the war.

 

Against a white-washed stage Costume Designer Brian O’Keefe’s choices were endless (except white!) and here he creates costumes not only appropriate for the different eras of the characters, clearly distinguishing each, while still sharing certain earth tone palettes. O’Keefe is a stickler for the details.  They are award winning visions, and I loved 1993’s wide legged pants and sunglasses pushed up in her blond hair.  It tells a lot about the sought after community where helicopter parents landed with their kids.

 

O’Keefe brilliantly designed the swirling dress with the ubiquitous stretchy belt cinching in Ms. Lowe’s tiny waist which not only showed off her diminutive figure to perfection but allowed the actress to swish about in her more flirtatious moments.  The dirt-red sweater thrown about her shoulders added the final perfect touch.

 

The execution of the complex staging of this play warrants kudos to PBD’s Stage Manager, Kent James Collins.  Opening night went as smoothly as if the play had been in previews for weeks (vs. the reality of two days).

 

The Messenger is not only a world premiere, it is also the first production in a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere series and regional theatres in Texas and Minneapolis are already committed to producing it.  Fittingly Mrs. Roberta Golub, Georgia Gabor’s daughter, is the executive producer of The Messenger. 

 

At the end, Fang, who plays 2020, has the temerity to begin to “step outside the box” (full lighting for this dramatic effect).  Can the future learn from the past?  Isn’t it incumbent on all to become activists, to become messengers of The Messenger?  That is the ultimate question of this imaginative new play.

 

‘The Belle of Amherst’ –Emily Dickinson Inhabits Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

This stunning production incorporates the best features of the streamed version, which was broadcast by Palm Beach Dramaworks last year, while showing the power of live theatre to move an audience.  It shines a bright light into the very soul of the enigmatic poet, revealing her art and Emily herself.  This first-person monologue speaks truths about life and death with wisdom that came strictly from within, looking back at her life from her early 50s.  Margery Lowe gives an incandescent performance, breathtaking in range and passion.

 

The Belle of Amherst was meticulously researched by William Luce who wrote it in the mid 1970s inspired by the actress who would play the role on Broadway, Julie Harris.  She is closely identified with the play.  In addition to Luce’s brilliant integration of 19th century sensibility with Dickinson’s letters and poems, the Palm Beach Dramaworks production with Margery Lowe playing Emily, breathes real life into the character and her setting.  One would never know there is only one woman on the stage.

 

Lowe is not only a doppelganger for Emily; she also played her in a two-hander premiere at Dramaworks in 2018, Edgar and Emily. That work was lighthearted, comic in many ways, and you really didn’t get to fully know Emily as you do in Luce’s play.   

 

Lowe’s Emily is filled with life and expectations and the acceptance of her obscurity as a poet, although secretly hoping for publication.  She has her “words” and words are her life.  Yes, she must seek “the best words” and they swirl all about in her observations of nature, light, love, and the routines of living as well as the inevitability of death.  Although I have seen Lowe perform in many plays over the years, this is the one I will always remember.

 

William Hayes, The Belle of Amherst’s director, also doesn’t see this Emily as a shy reclusive intellectual, but, instead, a passionate observer, almost to the point of breathlessness, highlighting her mischievous side, capturing her vivaciousness as well as her vulnerability.  And she’s a great cook (her own opinion)!  He has her moving to and fro, from her writing desk to her bed, to the parlor, sitting on the floor with her scraps of writing and her finished poems.  All this while talking not only to the audience, and to herself, but to friends and family, one sided, of course; only she can hear the other’s reply.  Nonetheless, the audience can divine the other side from her reactions. 

 

In the streamed version Hayes had to be concerned about the camera view and now live theater has liberated the director to bring the full expanse to the audience, including the many comic touches which the streamed version could not fully exploit.  Laughter heightens her humanity and Hayes and Lowe capitalize on those moments.  As Lowe said when asked: “nothing beats live theatre. I did the film without a scene partner, but now my scene partner will be right in front of me.”

 

Margery Lowe does it all flawlessly, making an inward journey, inviting us along.  She fully engages the audience, seemingly making eye contact with everyone, creating a sense of intimacy which is rare.  I found myself frequently smiling as if she was talking to me personally.

 

Hayes and Lowe are in perfect sync, and on a magnificent stage designed by the award-winning Michael Amico.  Every detail on the stage has a purpose, the floral arrangements, the large windows upstage, perfect for lighting touches, her flawlessly made bed and dresser, her sacred, small writing desk, the tea cart and service, inspired by historical accuracy.  The entire stage takes on the feeling of a fine tapestry.  And the centerpiece is the trunk of her poems which she finally offers to the audience as her legacy.  “Remembrance’ – a mighty word.”

 

Light imagery is so important in her poems.  Once when we visited her home in Amherst which is now a museum, we were allowed to linger in her bedroom where her writing desk was, to be able to look out those same windows, and see the late afternoon light as she would have seen it.  One becomes acutely conscious of her light imagery and the sparse, enigmatic content of her poems.  Kirk Bookman’s lighting captures similar moments, ebbing and flowing with her emotions, beautifully framing Lowe.  During a rare display of the aurora borealis, colors flood the stage. 

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costumes are stirring.  Not only did he masterfully design and create Emily’s signature white ensemble with the cinched waist and voluminous sleeves, but all the accessories, the shawls, the apron, the bonnet and cape, and parasol add the finishing touches that lend such authenticity to this production.

 

Sound designer Roger Arnold’s ominous church bells chime during a funeral, and when Emily’s normally strict, staid father sound them as the aurora borealis began.  The sounds of a train are in perfect sync with Lowe’s gestures of the local train’s labyrinth path to Amherst or when she follows the clip clop of a horse drawn carriage.  Her favorite bluebird sang outside her window.  Arnold also reinforces PBD’s attention to detail as he chose classical incidental musical selections by a composer and pianist of her time, William Mason, whose music Emily might have heard. 

 

This play demands one’s full attention, but those who give themselves over to this inspired solo performance are in store for a soul searching and satisfying tour de force.  It runs through June 5th at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre in Downtown West Palm Beach.

‘So We Can See to See’ – The Belle of Amherst

Margery Lowe as Emily Dickinson

The heading is a variation on the final line of one of Emily Dickinson’s best known poems,” I heard a Fly buzz - when I died.”  A joint production by Palm Beach Dramaworks and Actors’ Playhouse of this well known play shines a bright new light into the very soul of the enigmatic poet so we can see to see her art and Emily, the passionate human being. 

In full disclosure, I feel a personal association with everything Emily.  In college I found myself memorizing several of her poems, or even parts of ones, which opened to truths so transparent that it literally took my breath away. 

I grew up in the Northeast and so did she, although her locale was New England’s Amherst whereas mine was New York City’s Borough of Queens.  One would think they have nothing in common, but when I read the first stanza of poem 320, “There's a certain Slant of light, / Winter Afternoons –/ That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes –“ it hit me in the solar plexus.  I know that light.  I have experienced it, and to actually feel it from literature left a never ending impression and I became a reader of Emily Dickinson.  I felt she spoke to me; and the truths about life and death.  What a wise, worldly poet I initially thought, not fully knowing that her wisdom came strictly from within.

The Belle of Amherst was meticulously researched by William Luce who only recently passed away.  He wrote it in the mid 1970s inspired by the actress who would play the role on Broadway, Julie Harris, who is closely identified with the play and one can still see it on YouTube.  But when I heard Dramaworks was contemplating a filmed version of a fully realized, staged rendition staring Margery Lowe, I was intrigued.

If William Luce could see this rendition he would undoubtedly approve.  In addition to his brilliant integration of 19^th century sensibility with Dickinson’s letters and poems, this production breathes real life into the character and her setting.  One would never know there is only one woman on the stage.

Margery Lowe is not only a doppelganger for Emily; she played her in a two-hander premiere at Dramaworks in 2018, Edgar and Emily. That work was light hearted, comic in many ways, and although she was a great Emily, you really didn’t get to know her as you do in Luce’s play.  Lowe is also a “deep diver” into research and she probably knows Emily as few do.  It shows in this production.

Lowe emphasizes that aspect of Emily which is filled with life and expectations and the acceptance of her obscurity as a poet, although secretly hoping for publication.  She has her “words” and words are her life.  Yes, she must seek “the best words” and they swirl all about in her observations of nature, light, love, and the routines of living as well as the inevitability of death. 

An actor’s life can be erratic, filled with uncertainty as casting calls for ideal parts are not in their direct control, but Margery Lowe’s portrayal of Emily IS her ideal role, and although I have seen her perform in many roles over the years, this is the one I will always remember.

I think the fact that this is a one woman show might be lost on the virtual audience because of the Director’s vision.  Bill Hayes doesn’t see this Emily as a shy reclusive intellectual, but, instead, a passionate observer, almost to the point of breathlessness, her mischievous side, capturing her vivaciousness but alas her vulnerability as well.  And she’s a great cook (her own opinion)!  As such he has her moving to and fro, from her writing desk, to her bed, to the parlor, sitting on the floor with her scraps of writing and her finished poems.  And she is delivering dialog not only to the audience, and to herself, but to friends and family, one sided; of course, only she can hear the other’s reply, but the audience can divine the other side from her reaction.  Margery Lowe does all flawlessly.

Hayes and Lowe are in perfect sync, and on a magnificent stage designed by the award-winning Michael Amico.  Every detail on the stage has a purpose, the floral arrangements, the large windows upstage, perfect for lighting touches, her sacred writing desk, not much larger—perhaps smaller – than the one I had in the 1^st grade, the tea cart and service, inspired by historical accuracy.  When the view is of the entire stage, it takes on the feeling of a fine tapestry.  And the centerpiece is the trunk of her poems which she finally offers to the audience as her legacy.  “’Remembrance’ – a mighty word.”

The lighting for a streamed stage production is tricky.  When the light comes from the front, it clearly is through imagined window panes, which beautifully frame Lowe.  During a rare display of the aurora borealis, colors flood the stage from the upstage windows.  Kirk Bookman’s lighting is clearly designed for their stage, yet effectively works with the filmed production.

Indeed, light imagery is so important in her poems, illuminating her omniscience.  We’ve twice visited her home in Amherst which is now a museum and on one such visit we were lucky enough to be allowed to linger in her bedroom where her writing desk was, to be able to look out those same windows, and see the late afternoon light as she would have seen it, the very views (sans the cars) and I was acutely conscious of her imagery of light and the sparse, sometime enigmatic content of her poems.  This streamed production, captured, for me, those same moments.  Indeed “there is a certain slant of light….”

Brian O’Keefe’s costumes are stirring, not only did he masterfully design and create Emily’s signature white dress with the cinched waist and voluminous sleeves, but all the accessories, the shawls, the apron, the bonnet and cape add the finishing touches that lend such authenticity to this production. Sound designer Roger Arnold’s ominous church bells chime during a funeral, and when Emily’s normally strict, staid father sound them as the aurora borealis began.  Arnold’s sounds of a train are in perfect sync with Lowe’s gestures of the local train’s labyrinth path to Amherst.

Hayes has directed a play of enduring significance, but as it is a streamed production performed without a live audience because of Covid, it is missing some of the laughter, or a chortle, here and there.  There are many comic touches in the play but they are addressed with just the right pauses, or by Lowe’s calculating looks. 

Hayes uses the cameras to their greatest advantage in this production, full stage at times and close-ups for others.  Yet Hayes’ editing is seamless, so the production exhibits the best of two worlds, “live” theatre, but well edited and filmed.

To say this production is satisfying is an understatement.  If only it could remain on YouTube, it would be the “go to” version to view, no disparagement intended towards Julie Harris’ performance, which remains inspired in its own way.  We now have the Margery Lowe classic.