Crimes of the Heart

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Something there is about dysfunctional families that grab attention, sparking imagination. Leaves one wondering if there is anything BUT dysfunctional families in our society.

Megan Van De Hey (Meg MaGrath), Laura Norman (Lenny MaGrath) and Emily Paton Davies (Babe Botrelle) in the Denver Victorian’s Crimes of the Heart. Photo byÊWade Wood

When Lenny McGrath shuffles into her Grandfather’s house, in the opening scene of Beth Henley’s three time Tony and 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Crimes of the Heart, the heart skips a beat. This is not a happy person, She’s carried the weight of the world on her shoulders for so long she no longer knows it’s there or cares. Laura Norman reveals the inside/outside of Lenny with explicit detail. She knows life simply because the heart beats, and somehow she can put one foot in front of the other. Dreams. Hopes, aspirations belong to other people, not to her. It’s her Birthday. Lighting a candle to stick onto a cookie becomes a near impossible task. It takes three attempts at singing Happy Birthday to herself to muster enthusiasm. Through Norman’s highly cultivated expertise, the scene weds heartbreak and humor.

The black-clouded atmosphere explodes into whimsical light beams with Chick Boyle’s entrance. A cousin, dressed to the hilt, self-appointed socialite, at least, as much a socialite as Hazlehust, Mississippi can handle, Chick’s mouth works faster than her brain functions. Replacing ruined panty hose with new ones becomes honest, classic comedy. Although the changing of the guard is about as undignified as it gets, never once does Chick lose her manufactured sense of dignity, making the scene even funnier. Susan Scott brings Chick to life layered with a multitude of conflicting issues. The surface ripples with an energetic nosy controlling piece of humanity projecting an upbeat style, sliced with judgmental sarcasm. The glint behind the eyes shoots beams of jealousy and loneliness. Loneliness and isolation matched by Lenny’s, except LennyÔs is honest. Chick viciously hides hers under contrived manipulation of “bubbly control.”

The family has rallied for the sake of Lenny’s younger sister, Babe who has shot her husband. Her only explanation is she “doesn’t like his stinkin’ looks”. The small town family scandal brings the third sister, Meg, back from Hollywood, where a hoped for singing career shredded into nothingness.

Megan VanDeHey wears Meg’s cloak of Hollywood pretense, guilt, and deceit with tailored measurements in a superb performance.

Emily Paton Davis knocks the socks off with her participation in Babe’s skin, soul and psyche.

The chemistry between Norman, VanDeHey and Davis has richly been established since their incredible portrayal of three vindictive scrumptious wives in The Avenue Theatre’s 2006 production of Smell of The Kill.

Directed by Terry Dodd at the Denver Victorian Playhouse, Crimes of the Heart lays bare deeply engraved issues of love, loss, fear, anxiety, jealousy and pretense of the three sisters. Not only are they forced to deal with Babe’s scandal; they are forced to face their own deeply buried demons.

Babe needs the best lawyer around. The only problem is the best lawyer around happens to be the husband she shot in the stomach.

Along with the backbiting, clawing, blaming, and self projected judgment Henley’s play is laced with juicy honest humor that appears wherever the human race happens to be. Henley’s insight into human nature reflects through the richly colored portrait of her characters. The true to life dialogue ties in with surface and buried innuendos. The stellar cast knows exactly how to bring everything to light, and Dodd’s directional insight weaves everything together.

Nils Swanson’s portrayal of Doc Porter nearly tears the heart. Swanson wears Porter’s confused agony on his sleeve. Now happily married, the memory of a once-upon-a-time romance with Meg bubbles to the surface crumbling around his feet. She left him and he wants to know why.

Even though Babe won’t talk, she has a lawyer, Barnette Lloyd, played to lawyer capacity by Brian J. Brooks. He too has a problem living with a heavy crush on his client. Trying hard to cover his feelings, the puppy dog eyes Brooks gives him tells the story.

Babe has reason to not talk, she thinks. She needs to protect an innocent until the protecting of an innocent doesn’t serve her well.

Conflicts and judgments bounce off each other creeping inside to each one until nothing can be hidden from anyone. Resolution comes with pain, laughter, and frequent cruel snipes. Through the peppery assaults, laughable insults, and ready made comeuppance, Lenny discovers she has legs she can stand on, that it’s not too late to allow life be given a chance. She who gave up everything to take care of her Grandfather, now confined to a nursing home, can retrieve dreams her Grandfather’s manipulation nearly destroyed. Meg discovers she doesn’t have to hide behind pretense. There’s an honest realness to her. Lenny’s slow on the draw demeanor can now be blown out the kitchen window.

The execution of this play for believability depends upon soul-searching characters and exquisite timing. The cast has it, projects it, does it.

Sarah Roshan’s set design of a large comfortable kitchen in small town Hazlehurst in the fall of 1980 pays attention to minute detail. It’s the kind of kitchen that says if these walls could only talk what stories could be told. The walls don’t have to talk the sisters speak for them. Karolyn Star Pytel’s lighting design in compliance with El Armstrong’s sound design encompasses bruised egos, inflated pretenses, warped jealousies, and gut wrenching revelations as the frenzied dance softens to a gentle waltz.

Humanity knows well how to breed, feed, and grow dysfunctional behavior. It also knows that when crimes of the heart are faced eyeball to eyeball and false acts of pretense are allowed to melt onto the kitchen floor where families meet, eat, and blow out Birthday candles, a realness to can be nurtured.

The Denver Victorian Playhouse’s production of Crimes of the Heart should not be missed under any circumstances. Work that schedule. Call for reservations now!