News & Reviews

THREE TALL WOMEN

FLC’s production of Albee play full of glorious dialogue
November 3, 2006
By Patricia Miller Arts & Entertainment Editor
 
Edward Albee must have taken great satisfaction in "Three Tall Women." He has called it his most autobiographical play, and in it he got even with his adoptive mother who disapproved of his homosexuality and his being expelled from school, or schools. She threw him out of the house at 18.

What's more, Albee won one of his Pulitzers, among many other prizes, for the play and made lots of money.

Ginny Davis who directs this Fort Lewis College production, worked with Albee at the University of Houston in 1990 and '91. She also did an internship with him at the Alley Theater in Houston. She described the great man Wednesday night as "brilliant but he knows it." She added, "There's nothing I could say that you could print."
Nonetheless, this is her favorite of Albee's plays. She chose it because the college will present Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" later this season with a male cast, and she wanted something equally weighty for the women.

I saw the play Wednesday in a soft opening for a half dozen friends and family.
The cast consists of three women known as A, B and C and a mute boy, the son, in the second act. Continuing the autobiographical thread, it's interesting that the eloquent Albee gave his fictional alter ego no words and an inability to see anyone else through most of his appearance. Dawson J. Cole played the part bravely, perhaps a strain considering that he was surrounded by actors who have beautiful dialogues.
And it is the dialogue that is the glory of the play. I found myself copying down quote after quote, far more than I can use here, simply because it's so arresting. Davis said that Albee hated directors and actors because they ruined his plays. This would be one to buy and read.
For instance, A's husband once told her, "You're so tall, so big, you'll cost me a fortune. I can't give you little things."

The single set is the comfy bedroom of the invalid. A, a testy, failing, rich 92-year-old who reminisces repetitively through Act 1, then suffers a stroke. She returns rejuvenated, perhaps after her death, in Act 2. Kelleen Aragon takes on this demanding part, the fulcrum of the play, masterfully. She performs the difficult task of playing far above her age with skill, drawing the audience into her performance and dispelling any notion that she's a college student rather than a matriarch.

B, played by Desiree Henderson, plays Act 1 as the graceful, self-effacing caretaker who can turn the old lady's crotchets to laughs.

Ashli Ann Hemstreet is C, the bumptious young lawyer sent to get the old lady to sign papers, who is appalled by her client, calling her "that thing."

This is not a charming date play. It's for people who want to take a sustained, often painful, look at the span of life.

Act 1 went on too long for my taste. I would have cut a bit, but it's worth sticking with it for the revelations of the second act. There are, however, comic pieces in both acts that had the audience chuckling.

It's a spare production. The music is minimal and the lighting doesn't call attention to itself.
As Act 2 opens, it's revealed that all three women are the same woman at 26, 52 and 92. Hemstreet plays the shocking A, presented with a frightening future, in a sympathetic way. Henderson's character gets to open up into a knowing, sexy, graceful presence who has a thing or two to tell us. And Aragon is given renewed vitality and great wisdom.

The play ends with a splendid cliff hanger. After A and B have espoused their versions of what's the best in life, C laughs at them as naive and - from her experience after a full life and perhaps with the benefit of death to expand her vision - she tells them what is the loveliest moment of all.

Of course I won't ruin it for you by giving away her secret.