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Let them eat cake: 'Crimes of the Heart' celebrates family and attempted murder to delightful effect
Special to the Daily Mail
"Crimes of the Heart," the 1980 Pulitzer winning play by Beth Henley, continues Saturday at the Fox Playhouse, 110 S. Main, Nevada, at 8 p.m.
Sponsored by Dr. Sean and Erika Gravely and directed by Kim Bessey, the play investigates the little indignities that eat away at us and destroy our belief in ourselves and those closest to us.
Small crimes, such as thoughtlessness, unkindness, ingratitude, and self-absorption pit the three Magrath sisters, Lenny (Stephanie Spruill), Babe (Sarah Haney), and Meg (Maranda Spangler), and their cousin, Chick (Melissa Neely), against each other, each continuing to up the verbal ante until meanness and misunderstanding nearly destroy them.
The only real crime is Babe's attempted murder of her abusive husband, Zachery. Although Zachery's presence is felt in the dialogue, he never appears on stage, although we do learn the good news early on that "his liver's saved" although "damage to the spinal column" is still up in the air.
Unless you think this play is too serious, let me stress that this Southern gothic comedy with all of its black humor won a Pulitzer, a New York Drama Critic Award, and a Tony nomination because the writing is fantastic. The lines zing, and even though the play is set in 1974, in Hazelhurst, Miss., the dialogue still works.
This cast has a synergy that feeds the energy of the play. It's essential to the play's believability that the sisters have a realistic chemistry in their interactions together and separately, and they do so marvelously.
The play opens on Lenny's 30th birthday. She's sitting alone at the kitchen table lighting her own birthday candle. The granddaddy, who has raised the sisters after their father abandoned them and their mother hanged herself (along with the cat), is hospitalized, and Lenny's role as his sole caretaker has left her old before her time. Her loneliness is enhanced by her belief that no man wants her because she cannot have children.
Meg is the spoiled and self-centered middle sister, a singer of sad songs, who took off for Hollywood and a music career but has given up her dreams and is instead working at a dog food company.
They are reunited because the youngest sister, Babe, has been arrested and is facing trial. The sisters are forced to confront their past grievances in ways that allow them to become stronger women and better sisters.
They are aided in their development by their mean-spirited cousin Chick, Doc Porter (Jason Fowler), the beau Meg promised to marry during Hurricane Camille but abandoned as soon as the storm passed, and Barnette Lloyd (Mike Bessey), Babe's attorney whose eagerness to save her from jail is more about his personal vendetta against Babe's husband than Babe.
In fact, Babe's guilt is not in question. She admits she "held out the gun aiming for his heart, but getting him in the stomach" was all the damage she could do. Haney brings this character to life in retelling the details of the shooting to Meg and then to Lloyd. Haney is both simple and complex, na*ve and sophisticated. She makes us see Babe's pain while allowing us to laugh at her behavior following the shooting.
Building his defense detail-by-detail, Lloyd hangs on Babe's every word. Bessey is a good straight man for Haney's scattershot details of the crime scene. "All right," Bessey's character says, "you've just shot one Zackery Boutrelle, as a result of his continual physical and mental abuse -- what happens now?"
Turns out Babe made lemonade -- with lots of sugar -- added two trays of ice -- and drank three glasses before calling out to her bleeding husband and offering him a drink. Haney is great in this scene, and the more ridiculous Babe's story becomes, the more sympathetic Haney makes her.
Spruill is a natural as Lenny. Wearing a buttoned up cardigan and argyle socks, she is about as spinsterly as a young woman just turning 30 can be. Lenny is the glue that holds the play together, and Spruill does a good job maintaining the temperature on stage. Her character is complex, and her moods shift with the action.
I think Spruill is at her finest when she turns on Cousin Chick and chases her out of the house with a broom after Chick has called Meg "cheap Christmas trash." She's proud of herself for chasing "Chick the Stick right up the mimosa tree," and Spruill makes us feel Lenny's delight in defending her sister. Lenny can attack her sister, but an outsider better back off.
Likewise, Neely is a great carp. She is a satisfyingly wicked, mean girl whose put-downs of the Magrath sisters are over the top. She is overbearing, wears too much makeup, and enjoys the pain she causes when pushing the bruises of their pasts and present.
My favorite character is Meg. Spangler makes her smoking, boozing, pill-popping excesses sympathetic, and those pink pants and green stilettos she pulls off in Act II are so deliciously reminiscent of the lubricious 70s that I found myself humming that old Ozark Mountain Daredevil's hit "If You Want to Get to Heaven, You Got to Raise a Little Hell." Meg has clearly raised a lot of hell, and the secrets she doesn't tell make her lovable when she finally owns up to what her life has been like since leaving Hazelhurst.
Meg's interactions on stage with Fowler are convincing and poignant. Fowler captures the bewilderment of a man who was wounded -- physically and emotionally -- by someone he loved, who bears no ill-will but wants to understand why. Cast Notes say that this performance is Fowler's first at the playhouse, but I hope it isn't his last. He's so lovable, you'll want to jump on stage and give him a hug.
Lenny's birthday cake "a day late" is the sweet that runs throughout all three acts, and its appearance at the end of the play suggests that for the first time, sugar might bring this family together after all. Babe may never get past adding too much of it to her glasses of lemonade if she stays out of jail, but I say, "Let them eat cake, and may they enjoy it."
I enjoyed the play, and I know you will, too. You can catch it Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., and again the following weekend, Nov. 20-22 at the same times. Director Bessey has done an incredible job of putting the story together, and the cast is very good. Don't miss this one, and be sure and thank Sean and Erika Gravely for sponsoring the arts in Nevada.