Theater Review—

Theater Barn’s ‘Crimes’ Is A Wonderful Portrayal Of Sisterhood

By Julie Stern

RIDGEFIELD — When Crimes of the Heart, Beth Henley’s play about a trio of southern sisters caught up in the web of their own blighted passions, was made into a movie, the three were played by Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton and Sissy Spacek. While Betsy Barber, Diane Gallo and Ryan Burbank, who play the roles onstage at the Ridgefield Theater Barn are in no way trying to imitate those screen personalities, they give the play an interpretation that is as riveting and remarkable as anything the Hollywood actresses could do.

Barber, Gallo and Burbank lead a cast at Ridgefield Theater Barn that is presenting the Pulitzer Prize-winning work weekends until August 16. The effort made by the cast and its director make it worth the trip into Ridgefield.

The Magrath sisters are just this side of being a dysfunctional family, shamed and traumatized by their father’s desertion and their mother’s subsequent suicide when they were small, leaving them to be raised by their grandparents and looked on suspiciously by their neighbors. Sixteen years later, the play centers on interactions in their kitchen as their grandfather lies near death in the local hospital, and Babe, the youngest sister, has been arrested and let out on bail for shooting her lawyer-politician husband.

Over the course of some 24 hours, this zany, quirky, often hilarious but also seriously moving drama explores the nature of their relationship as it gets to the root of why Babe shot Zachary, and what hope the future has for each of the sisters.

At age 30, Lenny Magrath (Barber) is the classic oldest child, driven by the need to be responsible and hold things together but also frayed by loneliness and the prospect of spinsterhood. It is she who kept house for her widowed grandfather, enduring the patronizing slights of her insufferable cousin and next door neighbor Chick Boyle, played perfectly by M.J. Hartell.

Four years younger, Meg Magrath (Gallo) is a tough, brassy outlaw type who has just returned from a failed career as a singer in Los Angeles. Selfish, impulsive and apparently recklessly indifferent to the consequences of her actions, Meg tells casual lies, makes promises she doesn’t keep, and has ruined every relationship she has ever been in. Yet it is she who is her grandfather’s favorite. It is also she, who, as a ten-year-old, discovered their mother’s dead body, a fact which caused her to spend the rest of her life building up her emotional defenses.

Babe (Burbank), who married at 18, comes across as being a total space cadet but gradually it emerges that being “the baby” is a role she has learned to play, within the family dynamic, and that there is more substance and character to her than she initially lets on.

The plot, with its question of “what’s going to happen now?” is advanced by the presence of Ed Donahue as the one-time medical student whose heart was broken when Meg abandoned him five years earlier, and Rob Bleau as the idealistic young lawyer who is determined to rescue Babe, in part because he has a longstanding moral “vendetta” against her husband, and in part because he is falling in love with her himself.

However, what really makes this play wonderful is its portrayal of sisterhood. Especially when parents are absent, or emotionally distant, as is the case here, sisters can be tremendously important to one another. No matter how different they may be in personality, no matter how much they squabble or annoy one another, at the crunch time, as is happening in this play, the underlying knowledge and concern are supremely important, and will offer at least the possibility of redemption.

That it succeeds so well is a tribute to both Ms Henley’s skill as a playwright, and, under David Kelley’s solid direction, the performances of Barber, Burbank and Gallo.

In addition, Leif Smith has produced another of the high quality, richly detailed sets that make this small cabaret theater such a quality operation. Bring your drinks and dinner and take advantage of a wonderful evening of theater.

(For performance and ticket details call 203-431-9850 or visit www.TheaterBarn.org. Ridgefield Theater Barn is at 37 Halpin Lane; directions are available online or from the theater’s box office.)