TWTP Mounts Stimulating Regional Bow for ‘Trying’

REVIEW

The French novelist and critic Marcel Proust once wrote that “Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.” Tennessee Women’s Theater Project’s stimulating regional premiere of Trying provides that empathetic vision.

Joanna McClelland Glass’s largely autobiographical play uses a personality clash as springboard for a thoughtful look at two very different people that speaks to how we try, or don’t try, to bridge age, gender and cultural differences arising in our human interactions.

This well-written two-hander has had acclaimed runs in Chicago, Off-Broadway and elsewhere. Its first Nashville showing sparkles because Director Maryanna Clarke has cast and paced the show well.

It is November 1967, and we find ourselves in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Sarah Shorr (Keri Pisapia) is a 25-year-old Canadian with writing aspirations who in more ways than one is not far removed from the open prairie of her native Saskatchewan.

The young married has to make ends meet, so she takes a job as secretary to the health-worn 81-year-old Judge Francis Biddle (Fred Mullen), a patrician Easterner from Main Line Philadelphia’s upper-class society who starts correcting what he sees as her numerous deficiencies while insisting he’s in the final year of his life.

The obvious differences between the two make for rough going at first. Slowly, though, their initially frigid relationship begins to thaw.

Glass was secretary to Biddle in 1967-68 as the former U.S. Attorney General and judge at the post-World War II Nuremburg trials of Nazis came to the end of his life. She wrote a one-act play in 1970 which legendary actor Alfred Lunt regretfully declined to perform because of his increasing blindness.

After that, the one-act inspired by her time with Biddle was shelved while Glass went on to write successfully produced plays like the single-acts Canadian Gothic and American Modern and such full-length dramas as To Grandmother’s House We Go and Play Memory.  Thirty years later she returned to the material and the present two-hour play was first staged in 2004.

There may be plenty of personal and societal history in Trying, but Clarke and her actors know it’s the humanity of the characters that makes for compelling drama. Clarke has paced this show so that it flows easily through some of the play’s rich-veined references to famous people and events while giving us pause to see the vulnerabilities of Shorr and Biddle.

Mullen has spent many years onstage; he brings a wealth of acting and life experience to the role of Biddle for which there is no adequate substitute. He plays the part with a virtuoso’s variety. There isn’t a moment where you think you’re watching an actor, though; Biddle is simply and vividly alive again as his curmudgeonly roar gives way little by little to poignant expressions about loss and dying.

Pisapia nails her part too. We sense Shorr’s naiveté, but we also feel her strength and determination to overcome the obstacles that have long been part of her young life. It’s a complete performance where her embrace of the character’s emotional truth becomes ours.

Kristin “KJ” James’s set and Jeannine LaBate’s costumes place us firmly in Trying’s world. The crisp lighting calls of Katie Gant and the easygoing sound selections by Chris Clarke complete the firm technical foundations of this production.

Over the past several years Tennessee Women’s Theater Project has developed a niche for bringing works to Nashville that probably would not be seen here otherwise, and Trying is the latest sharply-executed example of that vital commitment. Now they’ve commissioned award-winning playwright and actress Regina Taylor (“The Unit,” “I’ll Fly Away”) to write a new play for them. Local theater has been, is and will be richer for TWTP’s singular contributions.

Tennessee Women’s Theater Project’s production of Joanna McClelland Glass’s Trying continues through Oct. 16 at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre (2301 Rosa L. Parks Blvd.). For more information please visit www.twtp.org.

Photo by Maryanna Clarke