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Weekend Stage Review: 'Little Women' at Prime Stage embraces all the warmth of Alcott's classic
Friday, March 10, 2000 By Mary Elizabeth David
Prime Stage's "Little Women," in a charming and intelligent adaptation by Sandra Fenichel Asher, is a delight. Briskly directed by Erin Fleming with actors the same age as the characters they play, it breathes new life into Louisa May Alcott's beloved story.
The adaptation is remarkably faithful to the text, but not slavishly so. For instance, in the second Christmas scene, when Beth is well enough to come into the parlor to receive her gifts, the original shows the list of gifts on a streamer blowing from the mouth of a "snow maiden" in the garden. In the play the list is sung by Laurie and the girls to the tune of "Deck the Halls" -- a warm, funny and endearing scene, and appropriately dramatic.
The play opens with Jo in her attic retreat reading to Meg an excerpt from the romance she is writing, and then continues with most of the novel's key scenes: Christmas with the hilarious presentation of Jo's play; Jo's meeting with Laurie and Meg's meeting with John; the Pickwick Club; Laurie's picnic; Beth's illness and recovery; the father's return and John's proposal to Meg. Most of the action takes place in the Marches' parlor, which is set behind the proscenium curtain, while others -- the picnic, the attic scene, and Beth's illness -- are played in front of it.
The whole production is given coherence by the recurrent image of the attic scene, which allows for scene changes behind the curtain. The device is important again in the final scene in which Jo and Laurie discuss the future and Jo starts to write, reciting as she does the opening lines of Alcott's novel and the play we've just seen: "What is the use of Christmas without Christmas presents?" Not only is this structurally satisfying, but it shows that Jo has a more mature view of what it means to be a writer.
The characters are just as one remembers them from the novel. Volatile, tempestuous Jo is played with verve by Natausha Marie Horton, whether bickering childishly with Amy or throwing herself into the melodrama of the play and novel that she writes. Her vehement rejection of Meg's attraction to John has an underlying poignancy suggesting her conflicted feelings about adolescence.
Beth (Holly Glymour) is quietly radiant throughout, and her sobbing as she tells Jo about the baby's death is heart-rending -- I doubt there was a dry eye in the house. Holli Hamilton is an appealing Meg with a sweetness and vulnerability underlying her attempts to assert her maturity. Eleven-year-old Lauren Cunningham makes Amy the pest Jo thinks she is -- she has a marvelous pout -- and amplifies the feelings of rejection children can feel when they are excluded.
Christopher Dimond is a bouncy Laurie -- a Tigger if there ever was one -- exuberantly leading the fun and games, but completely believable in his initial diffidence and his later concern for the girls' troubles. Marmee's role is pivotal, and even though she is offstage for half the play, her presence is always felt. Sue Morris is perfect in the part with her sweet face and soft voice -- she even makes the preachiness bearable.
For a large cast -- besides the principles there are 11 others -- the ensemble acting is of a very high order, and the bonding among the sisters and their parents is almost palpable.
While the sets and costumes are sketchy, they provide a sense of period, as does the use of 19th-century music during the scene changes. Set designer Sandra Moore makes serendipitous use of the stage's rust-red curtains to suggest the walls of a Victorian parlor, against which she places a flickering fireplace, an upright piano and an arched window with a window seat and working curtains that open to a view of the house across the garden. The attic nook has a ceiling of rough boards and joists and is just big enough to hold a small bookcase, writing table, chair and trunk. Costumes by Lisa Marie Bruno are equally simple -- full skirts with crinolines and petticoats for the women, a hoop skirt for Meg -- with various changes of blouses, shawls and bonnets. The men are suitably drab.
This production marks the first collaboration between Prime Stage and the East Liberty Presbyterian Church and its Hope Academy and will soon go on a tour of area schools. Obviously the play was a nostalgia trip for me -- I enjoyed the book as a child. But is it a girl thing or could inner-city boys get it, too?
Certainly poverty and female entitlement were issues that concerned Alcott, and they are by no means dead issues now. The play addresses "family values," a phrase that has is too often mauled, and projects the picture of a warm and affectionate family with the recurring image of Marmee in her rocker by the fire surrounded by the girls. Whether that gives you a bad case of the willies or the warm fuzzies, it's a rewarding theatrical experience produced by an accomplished and dedicated cast and company.
Mary Elizabeth David is a free-lance drama critic.
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Where:East Liberty Presbyterian Church, East Liberty.