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In the limited world where Lavinia and Hettie live, in Utah in the 19th century, small items of concern take on tremendous importance and larger, more universally influential moments become little more than happenstance. For these two Morman girls in 1857, aged 10, their own universe is tumbling and twisting and producing freaks of nature all around them. Hettie has seen a two-headed snake and a two headed goat, but never a two-headed calf and Lavinia claims to have one, pickled, in a cellar she keeps locked.
The girls are friends, but not best friends. Each has another interest: Hettie has a crush on Ezra; Lavinia is mad for Jane, a slightly older girl. Even so, over the course of forty years it is Hettie we see with Lavinia, and never Jane; Lavinia we watch in torment with Hettie, and not Ezra Two-Headed is the story of these two young women and their world, the one created by them, just for them. Even with a protected community and an enforced way of life around them, Lavinia and Hettie are intrigued, involved and doubly smitten with the world outside their Mormon community. The two heads are not just their own, or their freak in a bottle. In this play they are the two voices of reason, each with its own validity and its own failings, one keeping close to the traditions, to protecting secrets and abiding with the laws, and the other crying out in the wilderness, spewing venom and occasionally truths that need to be spilled publicly.
Two-Headed is on the Unicorn Stage at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and it stars two of the region’s most valuable assets, Corinna May as Lavinia and Diane Prusha as Hettie. They play very different women, clearly, and they do so in very different styles. May is hard push. She drives a point home physically and vocally with an intensity that hits right between the eyes. Prusha is softer in all things but just as poignant, perhaps even moreso due to her voice which is perhaps the most evocative and sensual female voice this side of the grave of Colleen Dewhurst.
Both girls age in the five scenes of the play, ten years between each scene, advancing from ten years olds to women in their fifties. Through each decade they are haunted by Mountain Meadow Massacre, a real incident which resulted in the deaths of a 127 people at the hands of violent Mormons living under the constant threat of government intervention in their way of life.
Lavinia, the seemingly more mature of the two girls, often behaves in the most childish manner. In the hands of Corinna May, an actress who has so much power in her slight body and round face, Lavinia is a borderline case, mad for an instant, rational for another. Her constant fluctuation betrays the character’s secrets without revealing them. Lavinia, who always speaks her mind, never speaks a complete truth, never unveils her thoughts for the world. Able to keep the darkest secrets for a lifetime, she sacrifices everything for the limits she imposes. May makes this all seem plausible somehow. She finds the hidden paths and reveals them with a gesture that forcefully obscures them. She manages to always be in conflict with her friend and with herself. It is a performance that is exhausting. That Lavinia is more careworn is amazing, for May plays her like a female Atlas, the world’s woes clearly laden on her inadequate shoulders.
Prusha is truly the opposite as Hettie. She seems totally incapable of secrets. Hettie promises to keep one early on, but there is no way she could ever do so. Her cooing, purring voice, her open, up-turned palms and her eyes reveal the presence of a secret long before her voice speaks it but it is clearly there. Her ten year old is a traditional ten year old. Her passionate twenty-year old is all magic and moment and miracles. Prusha has a way of making us believe in her validity. Behind the Hettie we see there is another animal nature hidden and Prusha reveals that nature in her own restrained way. Never the clawing, snapping beast that Lavinia can become, Hettie is a theatrical scrim, back-lit, revealing everything. In one scene she remains standing completely still for an eternity, acting the role of Hettie with voice, gesture and face alone and this modest, tiny performance leaps into life and into reality with a shamefully accurate visibility.
The two women are directed in an open-faced performance of this play by Marc Geller who seems to have taken notice of each character’s weaknesses and strengths and exposed both in the best way possible. Not a traffic cop, Geller has directed the internal play between these characters. It is that internal aspect provided by the excellent script that Geller works with best; his stage pictures are fine and the physical balance between May and Prusha is never incorrect or false for even a moment.
The Unicorn Theatre stage designers have done a brilliant job of using the stage to create a place in time and psychological space. The two actresses who are placed on it, inhabit it with an eagerness that makes it seem like the most familiar landscape.
Performed without an intermission the play runs one hour and 22 minutes. It is time well spent as two of the Berkshires’ best play one of the best two-headed plays you may ever see.
◊07/29/2007◊
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| Corinna May as Lavinia; photo: Kevin Sprague |
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