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Volume CXXXII, Number 4 |
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No more Happy Days
GYLLIAN CHRISTIANSEN
STAFF WRITER
I never watched Happy Days. The opening theme so irked me that I could never make it through one of those reruns. Even so, at the start of the one woman show A Lovely Light, I immediately recognized Marion Ross, little Ritchie Cunningham's TV-land mother. On Monday night in Kresge auditorium, Ross took on the role of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The play, written by Dorothy Stickney, draws most of its dialogue from Millay's own poems and letters.
Marion Ross seemed tired. Or at the very least, distracted. I'll admit I was also distracted, but by her choice to spend the performance draped in what was essentially a black, shapeless, crushed velvet ensemble. The dramatically wide scoop neck meant that it could only be compared to the curtain throws used to make all females in high school yearbook photos look homogeneously attired. The reason I mention this is that it was so grotesquely unflattering that it practically overshadowed the first act.
Besides this aesthetic detraction, Ross stumbled over the order of her lines, and the emotional arc of her performance felt forced. At times, she almost seemed to be hopscotching her way through the transitions, jumping from the "naive Edna" square to the "coy n' feisty Edna," then one square up for a monologue spent as "earnest Edna"- and then back to coy once more. But while I was repeatedly jolted out of the show by these visible mechanics, this is not to say it was an unsuccessful evening. In fact, quite the contrary, as the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. They loved the references to Millay's Camden, Maine upbringing, and her own self-aggrandizing humor. And Ross did a beautiful job of presenting the subtleties of growing maturity as Millay aged throughout the play. Ross has an impressive stage presence, and she obviously knew her audience. Even when she seemed to stumble, she always managed to elicit a satisfied giggle or knowing sigh from the crowd.
The play itself is a fairly straightforward effort, but does an even job of drawing themes from Millay's life out of her poetry. Millay's poems are inherently fun, with their indulgent and unapologetic rhyming, and their subject matter which leaps from the trifling to the titanic completely unselfconsciously. They help the play to revel in decadent nostalgia and romanticized images of artistic poverty- all of which lends itself quite well to this kind of evening. As does, I'm sure, Marion Ross- most of the time.