Some plays resonate with the national mood at a particular point in time, then remain relevant decades later, perhaps a century later. Others, not so much. Case in point: "Crimes of the Heart," now being presented at Anchorage Community Theatre.
When Beth Henley's semi-serious chick flick for the stage won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, it caught the wave of a new dramatic genre that featured sharply developed female lead characters in search of meaning in their lives, involved in screwball situations, told in lively comic dialogue with a few tears thrown in and resolved with some form of the moral "Sisterhood heals all."
After a few millennia of male dominated-theater, this formula had a fresh feel in the 1970s and '80s. It supplied hit vehicles for artists with razor-sharp acting skills like Jill Clayburgh, Cybill Shepherd and Diane Keaton, the latter of whom co-starred in the movie version of "Crimes of the Heart" in the role of Lenny.
Christina Johnson has that role in the ACT production. Lenny is the oldest of three sisters, each of whom is stupendously lonely in her own way. She's fussy, a caregiver, a pushover, probably a virgin, celebrating her 30th birthday all by herself. Her little sister Babe, played by Kimberly Allely, has just put a bullet in the stomach of her husband, a big shot in their Mississippi town, either because he's abusive or because he knocked down her black teenage boyfriend or because she's tired of him or because she's just plain nuts.
Andrea Staats plays the middle sister, Meg, a free spirit with fading hopes of a singing career, who returns from Hollywood because the girls' grandfather is dying. Old granddaddy raised the trio after their father deserted the family and their mother hanged herself along with her cat. We understand that life has not been easy for the sisters, something their socially conscious cousin Chick, played by Jacqueline Hoffman, doesn't seem to get.
Two male characters pop in: Meg's old lover, played by Jeremy Johnson, and Babe's flighty attorney, played by Gregory Parsons. The former is the meatier character, struggling to understand why he was jilted but unwilling to be angry about it now that he's happily (perhaps) married to a Yankee and has two lovely half-Yankee children. The attorney seems sweet on his client, but may have the same basic character flaws as her shot-up husband. It was easier to find some depth in Johnson's portrayal than in Parsons'.
The women in this production are all credible, but the best performance, nuanced and solid, came from Staats. Among other things, her facial expressions -- easily read in the intimate seating of the theater -- suggested someone thinking things through rather than letting things happen to her, with a calculated rationality behind her choices and the courage to take action while it might still make a difference.
Rebecca Casselman's direction had things moving at a good clip, but some items, like the shouting contests that would erupt into incoherence, then abruptly clear, felt amateurishly artificial, though funny. Kaichen McRae's set, depicting Lenny's kitchen, was nicely detailed and in period.
While I enjoyed the show, it did not charm me as it did 30 years ago. The script, like so many Shepherd/Clayburgh/Keaton features of the time, now feels trite, the characters concocted, the storyline predictable, the hoped-for revelation missing, the catharses -- and each sister has one -- as facile as those in a made-for-cable movie.
Some of the prominent elements in "Crimes of the Heart" can also be found in David Vann's novel "Caribou Island." A girl finds her mother hanging. A daughter becomes suicidal herself. The opportunity and motive arise to kill a frustrating husband. But "Caribou Island," set on the Kenai Peninsula, is a masterpiece that will transcend its era, I believe. Each of the main characters is not only genuine, but their motives -- however unstable -- are understandable. The reader can at one point or another see parts of him- or herself in each of them. This causes deep Vannian discomfort and the discomfort makes you think hard.
Plays and books and movies that endure have a point that makes us learn something profound about ourselves. "Crimes of the Heart" has a good deal of verbal wit and alluring nostalgia. It still works as a pleasant evening of entertainment. But like so much popular culture with roots in the '70s, it has the substance of a can of Tab.
"Crimes of the Heart" will be presented at Anchorage Community Theatre at 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 8. Tickets are available at centertix.net.
Alaska Dispatch Publishing