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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
‘Gee’s Bend’ @ Alabama Shakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B +
Montgomery, Ala. — Since the discovery of their striking geometric quilts, the women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., have been embraced, even objectified, as quaint grandmas from a nearly forgotten place and time — as sweet and homespun, perhaps, as their miraculous fabric inventions.
But what of the hard work, the poverty and social struggle, the joys and sorrows of marriage and family and the inevitable handing down of their fragile traditions?
In “Gee’s Bend,” Alabama playwright Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder turns back the sheets to reveal an intimate glimpse of the complicated lives behind the handmade objects.
Commissioned and developed by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival as part of its Southern Writers’ Project, Wilder’s enthusiastically received world premiere is a glorious piece of theatrical handiwork that uses the civil rights movement as thread for stitching together the rich emotional material of a close-knit family of quilters. With echoes of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” “Gee’s Bend” has the rare distinction of being a lovely work of art and a bona fide crowd-pleaser.
Loosely based on the author’s conversations with residents of the isolated, river-locked community, the story takes us into the modest home of Alice Pettway (Maura Gale) and her squabbling siblings, Sadie (Roslyn Ruff) and Nella (Atlanta’s Margo Moorer).
While Nella forswears men and quilts, Sadie marries young and sews out of necessity. To the horror of Sadie’s abusive husband, Macon (Billy Eugene Jones), she also chooses the path of political independence: darting off to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preach, drink from a whites-only fountain and march across Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge.
Though the results are devastating, Sadie eventually wins her emancipation (in more ways than one), while Nella recedes into the childlike world of her imagination and old age.
Ruff -— familiar to Alliance Theatre audiences for her performances in “Intimate Apparel” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” — gives another heartbreaking turn as a vulnerable figure reminted by self-sacrifice and courage. Moorer, for her part, provides a blast of comic relief as the impetuous and meddling Nella; and yet, at the end of the day, Nella is sad, lonely and bereft as she waits by the river for the ferry that stopped coming years ago.
Director Janet Cleveland and musical director-sound designer Brett Rominger heighten the play’s spiritual tone by introducing segments of traditional gospel music, mournfully sung by the cast. As Macon, Jones is by turns seductive and brutal, and Gale does a fine job of reinventing herself as Sadie’s ambivalent daughter, Asia.
Michael Schweikardt’s simple, rough-hewn set and Rosa M. Lazaro’s authentic costumes keep the focus plainly on the drama. (Schweikardt also designed the quilts, which are stylistically faithful to the originals but not exact replicas.)
By nature and design, quilts are tailor-made metaphors for shelter, comfort and love. As evinced by Wilder’s characters, the ladies of Gee’s Bend are natural nesters and nurturers, but the paradox of every matriarchal culture is its strength.
With its rivers and thresholds, Gee’s Bend is a mythic, time-swept place, populated by human monuments of grace and endurance. Far more than just accidental combinations of cotton and cloth, its quilts are smeared with blood, sweat, tears and the ocher-colored dirt of Alabama.
THE 411: Through Feb. 11. $15-$22. Alabama Shakespeare Festival, 1 Festival Drive, Montgomery. 1-800-841-4273, www.asf.net.
THE VERDICT: Like the quilts, 100 percent pure.
