Karla
Presented by BroadAxe Theatre
Through Nov. 2 at the Belcourt Theatre
BroadAxe Theatre came into being last year, a Nashville enterprise spearheaded by singer-songwriter Steve Earle and actress Sara Sharpe, both of whom are ardent social activists, particularly in the fight to abolish the death penalty. Since then, the company has mounted some interesting work, including a rather dour play called Mud by Maria Irene Fornes and, more recently, Conversations in a Time of Terror, a series of monologues commemorating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Like many a small theater, BroadAxe seems to serve, first and foremost, as a podium for its chief proprietors—offering a place where they can work and present their creations to the world. It is certainly the hope of many that even if chief honcho Earle is off recording and touring, Sharpe and BroadAxe will soldier on in their mission to provide provocative and aware dramatic opportunities for Nashville audiences. In the meantime, the company’s latest, Karla, represents a culmination of its short-term goals, mainly because the world-premiere play was written by Earle and features Sharpe in the lead role.
In 1983, at the age of 23, Karla Faye Tucker became infamous when she and her boyfriend, Danny Garrett, were arrested in Houston on charges that they brutally murdered a biker named Jerry Lynn Dean and his temporary bed partner, Deborah Thornton. There was never any doubt about Tucker and Garrett’s culpability, and both were summarily convicted and imprisoned. Both were headed for eventual capital punishment as well, and the particularly heinous nature of their crime—committed remorselessly with a pick axe and a ballpeen hammer—drew the pair no sympathy nor legal champions.
Garrett died in prison in 1994. Tucker, however, lived on, and somewhere along the way, she found the Lord. As a kind of testament to her new enlightenment, she eventually married prison chaplain Dana Brown. As the date of her execution drew nearer, Tucker began to receive some media attention, not least of all from TV hosts Larry King and Geraldo Rivera, who, in their willingness to expose her situation to the public, gave the country a dose of the converted Karla—which, in turn, helped to fuel the ongoing debate about the morality of the eye-for-an-eye ethos. Tucker’s case received revisitation by Texas prison officials and even had a brief hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet the die had been cast long before the “new Karla” had made her appearance; with all legal challenges exhausted—and under orders from then Texas Gov. George W. Bush—Tucker was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 3, 1998, the first female to be put to death in that state since the Civil War.
These are the cold, hard truths of the Karla Faye Tucker story, and they are all acknowledged in Earle’s script. Yet the author also offers us a full-bodied portrait of his subject. Karla’s pre-crime life was no bed of roses, and Earle effectively profiles her slapdash upbringing and her early descent into drugs and prostitution, the latter learned at her mother’s knee. With only a seventh-grade education, Tucker was fending for herself way too young, and the combination of painkillers and speed (and God knows what else), along with her penchant for consorting with less-than-stellar characters, made for an inevitably dark future.
Earle offers us none of this by way of apology for Tucker’s criminal actions, nor as some sort of rationale for elimination of the death penalty. He gives us a meaningful portrait of a seemingly meaningless life—and that is all. Given what we know about Earle’s predilection for making his opinions known, his drama is all the more admirable in its restraint. We come to the theater not to praise Karla, but to bury her. As an act of dramatic catharsis, Karla is a first-rate script, filled with all sorts of true-crime horror and unsavory personalities, beneath which Earle manages to find precious humanity. Yet Karla is more than death-row drama. It also follows in the broader tradition of Southern literature, where rural mentalities collide with sad and inexorable fury. (Or, as Karla says, “Sooner or later, we all betray each other.”)
The play isn’t perfect. For example, it strains credibility when Karla talks about prostitution as a feminist issue with her mother. (Given what we know of her life, would she actually have engaged in such a conversation, or have had such an insightful POV?) And there’s a subtle and brief bit of sermonizing on the dangers of using unclean needles when shooting up. This seems unnecessary and not germane to anything, really. But these are quibbles. For a work in its debut-performance draft, Karla is nothing short of remarkable.
Earle brings events to life through the setting of an otherworldly court trial, which turns out to be an intellectually intriguing and very mobile modus operandi, with principal characters taking the stand, as it were, and each taking turns as cross-examining counsel. Director Darrell Larson does a marvelous job of moving his excellent cast around the stage and through the big dramatic moments; the generally eerie multimedia ambience is helpfully captured by Wouter Feldbusch’s lighting, Ray Kennedy’s sound design and Julie Strong’s well-timed slideshow.
The players are terrific—and terrifically committed. Sharpe evokes believable sympathy when it comes to Karla’s religious transformation, yet her work is devoid of any cloyingness. We also witness the Karla who was capable of murder. If anything, perhaps the end result of this portrayal is to convey the importance of raising children, how nurture might triumph over nature. Alas, in Karla’s case, it was all too late.
W. Earl Brown, an actor with an impressive résumé of film, stage and TV credits, is Danny. After what appears to be a rather self-conscious start, he warms up to his role with credible intensity and he follows through to his raggedy end with much power. Local favorite Julie Rowe is compelling as Karla’s call-girl mother, Carolyn, playing dynamically against type. For an actress who not too long ago played Helen Keller’s mother in a Tennessee Repertory Theatre production of The Miracle Worker, Rowe wears her big hair, boots and blue-collar sensibility with appropriate style. Brandon Boyd is also well cast as Jerry, the primary victim of Karla’s rage; he comes across as basically a simpleminded, motorcycle-loving sap who, within Earle’s dramatic construct, gets an opportunity to vent his anger from the grave. Finally, there’s Holly Allen as Deborah, a young married woman with children, who should have been home that fateful night, but instead unwittingly paid with her life for straying from her family bed. Allen’s characterization is affectingly quirky and poignantly bewildered.
Karla is a major achievement in Nashville theater, and one exits the play with the feeling that it may likely resurface in other cities, which it most certainly deserves. It’s unmitigatedly strong stuff, but it demands a wide audience. There are only three more performances this weekend. People oughta go.
