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Aurora’s ‘Waving Goodbye’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”Waving Goodbye.”
Jamie Pachino’s ”Waving Goodbye” examines age-old questions about art’s permanence and life’s fragility, yet each moment crackles with originality.
The intimate, coming-of-age drama’s regional premiere at the Aurora Theatre in Duluth achieves rare theatrical elegance. Past and present commingle without a loss of clarity in the production directed by Freddie Ashley, literary associate at the Alliance Theatre.
First produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, ”Waving Goodbye” is a throwback to the classic American dramas of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The characters define themselves in complex, well-developed language recalling that era. The play is funny —- especially when it skewers artists’ pretensions —- as well as heartbreaking.
Meredith Woolard, a recent Florida State University graduate, portrays 17-year-old emerging photographer Lily Blue with all of the aching, questioning, vulnerable tenderness of a sensitive child on the shore of adulthood. Lily is haunted by the ghost of her mountain-adventurer father, who has recently died in an accident, and vexed by the return of her mother, Amanda, a once-brilliant sculptor who abandoned her years earlier.
Lily loves the leaking, deteriorating New York loft that is her childhood home. But Amanda wants to sell the junk-cluttered place. In teen uniform of jeans and T-shirt, her lovely face flushed with emotion, Lily wails, ”Girl in the middle of a catastrophe, that’s who I’ll be, for always.”
As Amanda, Joan Croker shows the essence of the self-absorbed, irresponsible artist who’s turned against her work. Amanda’s unclear about what she wants and zigzags across the stage in what is her coming-of-age story as much as her daughter’s.
Lily enters into an awkward, tentative relationship with Boggy, another abandoned late adolescent. A brilliant, artistic sprite, Boggy copes by telling brilliant riddles, and Chris Moses invests him with maturity and sensitivity.
As the only adult character in the play who willingly accepts responsibility, Patricia French gives a rich, nuanced performance as the cynical, hard-bitten but inwardly vulnerable Perry, the owner of an art gallery.
Portraying the ghost of a man haunting his family, Allen Hagler defines father Jonathan as the modern male who never quite grows up.
Designed by Tommy Cox, the set brilliantly shapes ”Waving Goodbye’s” themes of loss, growth, love and regret. The need to frame art is a recurring motif, and two wooden pieces at the back of the stage resemble the familiar, grooved pieces of a picture frame. The structure also serves as the loft’s roof and, in Amanda’s imagination, a mountain.
Early in the play, Amanda exclaims, ”The way up is easy, it’s the way down that’s impossible.”’ ”Waving Goodbye” makes the return journey of healing just as thrilling.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through Feb. 13. $18-$22 Aurora Theatre, 3087-B Main St., Duluth. 770-476-7926, www.auroratheatre.com.
The verdict: A sensitive coming-of-age drama full of theatrical power.
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