Tricky little bugger, the heart. It beats in the house of familial love, in the garden of romantic bliss, in the crucible of pent-up rage, in the vacuum of regret and despair.
But it knows a good zinger when it hears one.
Such elements course through Crimes of the Heart, Beth Henley's Pulitzer-winning "tragic comedy" about three small-town, Southern sisters tangled in crisscrossing crises, launching Nevada Conservatory Theatre's new season at UNLV.
And an amusing, affecting little heart-tugger it is.
True tragedy is the inability to leaven life's burdens with laughter. Playwright Henley, understanding that untidy human behavior doesn't fall neatly into narrow genres, can pungently dovetail drama and comedy into a punch line of absurdity, as when the sisters' cousin Chick huffs: "I've had just about my fill of you trashy Magraths and your trashy ways—hanging yourselves in cellars, carrying on with married men, shooting your own husbands!"
Hey Chickie, don't forget the slapstick suicide attempt when a sister bangs her noggin shoving it into an oven that won't heat.
Yes, it's Days of our Southern Fried Lives but character-rich in its soap-operatics—you'll enjoy being around these sweet 'n' sour 'n' sizzlin' siblings—and staged by Director Robert Brewer as cozy theater-in-the-round, maximizing the intimacy of the Black Box Theatre.
Scene designer Jeffrey Fiala's small, low-rent kitchen set is notched tightly into the middle of the theater, surrounded by the audience on risers (in a front-row seat, I could tap my foot on the fridge), while aisles provide actors access and egress through our midst. And the play feels more personal for it.
Set in 1978 Mississippi, Heart brings us frumpy elder sister Lenny (Kathryn Percival), still living in the family home. Fretting and fidgety over her 30th birthday, Lenny despairs of ever being loved by a man as she dutifully cares for her ailing grandfather. Wild-child middle sister Meg (Samantha Roy) returns after a failed sojourn to LA in search of a singing career that fizzled into a clerk's job at a dog-food company. And youngest sibling Babe (Regan Cooley) is out on bail after blasting a bullet into the stomach of her abusive husband, the town's most powerful attorney, who discovered her trysts with a black teenager.
If that doesn't soap you up enough, here's a little more lather: their mother hanged herself—alongside the family cat.
But oh, the plot puzzles: What secret kept Lenny from the only man she dared let herself love? What selfish act and sad accident came between Meg and ex-beau "Doc" Porter (Joe Wheeler), reunited now that he's married to a "Yankee woman"? Why did Babe calmly make a pitcher of lemonade (extra sugar) after perforating her hubby? Why is Babe's lawyer, Barnett (Jason Lockhart), so bent on courtroom revenge against his client's spouse? Why is "Chick the Stick" (Allison Gifford) such an insufferable, untamable shrew?
And why would Mom commit history's first human-feline/murder-suicide/double-hanging?
Henley deftly steers between the real and the ridiculous, so it succeeds simultaneously as tragedy and comedy, the latter supporting the former like a thumping bass line under a melody.
"I'm sorry, it just flew outta my mouth!" says Babe after she lets slip Lenny's secret to Meg. Screams Lenny: "Does your tongue have wings on it?"
Among the student cast (refreshingly free of union actors), Percival imbues Lenny with pathos, rage and sweetness—carefully digging a candle into a cookie and crooning "Happy Birthday" to herself; lashing out, as the sacrificing, straitlaced sister, at freewheeling Meg for slights and resentments old and new; joyously discovering a potential tunnel out of her misery. As Babe, Cooley exudes a grace that holds the stage for what she doesn't do, for what's held in reserve, but strongly hinted at and mysteriously appealing.
Roy's hippie-chick Meg, flame-red hair swept in a half-dozen directions, flower emblems stitched on the ass of her jeans, scores with the inverse approach. Though Brewer could have tamped her down a bit, her passion pours out of her full-body acting: She crouches, jumps, pivots, slaps her thigh, swivels her hips, swings her arms, even wriggles her fingertips in defiance of convention but defense of her sisters, especially Babe.
In strong support are Wheeler as Meg's rueful ex-lover and Gifford as tart-tongued Chick. And with his nasal Dixie twang and aw-shucks shyness, Lockhart charms as the lawyer defending a client for whom he nurses a puppy-dog crush.
All Crimes of the Heart lacks is an episode-ending announcer: "Tomorrow, on Days of our Southern Fried Lives ...."