Independence
Presented by Actors Bridge Ensemble
Dec. 16-19 at St. Augustine’s Chapel, 200 24th Ave. S.
8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat.; 5 p.m. Sun.
$10, for information, call 341-0300
Family—everybody’s got one. But coming to grips with it is another matter altogether. Just ask the Briggs girls in the Actors Bridge Ensemble production of Lee Blessing’s Independence, which opened last Friday at St. Augustine’s Chapel on the Vanderbilt campus. Indeed, there are so many issues on the dining room table at the Briggs’ cozy little home that audience members may need a Freudian primer to keep ’em all straight. Director Vali Forrister serves as the tour guide through this family’s tattered lives, and one gets the impression that putting her cast of four lady actors through their paces might have been an emotional roller coaster in and of itself. Happily, through all the angst, the production emerges triumphant, even if all the characters don’t.
At curtain’s rise, Kess Briggs, a thirtyish Minneapolis academic listing to the lesbian side, has returned to the family home in Independence, a small town in Iowa whose name is decidedly thick with irony. Kess has been summoned by little sister Jo, who’s in her late 20s, single, pregnant—and is sporting a neck brace, the result of an unfortunate incident with their mother, Evelyn, who we come to learn has a history of emotional problems. It quickly becomes apparent that for Kess, Jo, and baby sister Sherry—who, along with Mom, is waiting in the wings—this is déjà vu all over again. The look on Kess’ face says it plainly: There is a welter of unresolved issues in this house, and trying to deal with them will only bring frustration, discomfort, bad memories, and sadness to the fore.
But this, we understand, is what families do. So the Briggs ladies set out, over the course of 10 days and nine scenes, on an emotional excursion into the past, present, and future, both erecting and destroying bridges that are built on the shaky joists of love—though the word is rarely, if ever, spoken.
Where to begin? Well, the last time Kess was in town, she checked her mother into a mental hospital, after which Jo brought her home three months later. All the girls are in agreement that Evelyn is a trial; furthermore, each wants her own freedom, her own life. Most of all, they don’t want to be responsible for a mother whose erratic behavior swings wildly from calm reality and apparent knowing manipulation to intense delusion and physical volatility. And yet somewhere within the problem of Evelyn lie the roots of their own neuroses: If they abandon her, are they abandoning themselves?
The daughters react dynamically, like the textbook psychological cases they are: children of divorce and paradigms of birth order. Eldest Kess attempts “rational” solutions, even trying a bit of group therapy in the living room, a ploy that ends in disaster. Youngest child Sherry—a high-school senior with a penchant for recreational sex—assumes a devil-may-care attitude, either very naively or very knowingly refusing to become embroiled in the deeper meaning of it all. Stuck in the middle is Jo, who desperately tries to forge bonds among her sisters while at the same time seeking Evelyn’s approval, a situation that results only in her functioning as her mother’s spiritual scratching post.
In scene after scene, the tortuous issues of modern life are played out—in all their pathos, futility, humor, and, yes, hope. Author Blessing has a sensitive eye for the confounding contradictions of that thing called family. His is a chicken-or-egg proposition that ultimately asks the question, who abandons whom? The murky answer lies somewhere in his all-too-vulnerable characters, who are distinctively wrought and speak much painful truth. In particular, Evelyn Briggs is frighteningly real, and one can only conclude that Blessing has had, at some point in his life, some very close encounters of the schizophrenic kind, so keen is the portrait he paints of this troubled soul.
Linda Speir takes on the daunting role of Evelyn with possibly as much courage as the author mustered in writing it. Hers is a haunting portrayal of a fiftysomething woman who isn’t quite unstable enough—her grip on reality is sufficient to greet the day, but she lacks the strength to make it through without scarring those whom she might otherwise treat with affection. Therapy would probably elude her, and pills would only diminish her, though the latter could make living with her a little more manageable than the current state of affairs.
Alison Peters, making her stage debut, is effective in capturing daughter Kess’ stoical demeanor, though she does trod the boards with an awkwardness that may be masking the trepidation of a novice. (Or is it the play’s scary emotional terrain that is the culprit?) On the other hand, Jenny Littleton as Sherry possesses remarkable presence, playing the youngest Briggs girl with an irresistible impudence and a sexy élan. Elizabeth Bell plays Jo and is, like her character, the unsung heroine of the evening. Her steady, sincere performance is the glue that holds the stage family together and most readily embodies the play’s lasting message: Try as we might, we can’t deny who we are or where we come from. The road to independence is a hard-traveled one indeed.
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