Bull in a China Shop

C-

Mary Woolley led such an interesting life that it is hard to imagine that it could be turned into a boring play, but playwright Bryna Turner, making her professional debut with this LCT3 production, has managed just that. Among her many achievements, Woolley was president of Mt. Holyoke College for over 35 years and was largely responsible for transforming it from a sleepy regional seminary to a first-rate women’s college. One of her first official acts was to hire her lifelong partner Jeannette Marks, as a professor of English and, within the year, to make her department chair. Suspected favoritism toward Marks dogged Woolley’s career. What Turner has written came across to me as scattered chapters from a Cliff Notes summary of a biography. There was very little enlightenment and not much emotional involvement. Maybe it was more meaningful to lesbians. Since there were two excerpts from a lecture on Woolf’s Orlando, maybe it would have helped to have read that book. As I experienced the play, it shed little heat or light. I must confess that I had to fight nodding off a few times. The multicultural cast is led by Enid Graham as Woolley and Ruibo Quan as Marks. Lizbeth Mackay plays the college’s tradition-bound dean, Michele Selene Ang plays Pearl, a student with a crush on Marks, and Crystal Lucas-Perry’s character, Felicity, is either Marks’s landlady or roommate. The deliberately contemporary dialogue uses the title “Ms.” and is loaded with gratuitous F-bombs. Turner stretches anachronism too far for me when she describes a peace conference to which Woolley was sent by President Hoover: she says she wanted to tell Hitler to pull out of Poland. The conference was seven years before he invaded. Oana Botez costumes the leads in culottes. Did American women wear them 100 years ago? The set design by Arnulfo Maldonado features a back wall with a bright floral design and a large window, a slightly raked polished wooden floor and a walkway at the front. Before the play begins, the set is obscured by a large white rectangular object hanging down that looks like a mattress, but raises to form the set’s ceiling. When the play ended and the rectangle was lowered to its initial position, at least 15 seconds went by before there was applause. Lee Sunday Evans directed. Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission.

Little Children Dream of God **

The mission of Roundabout Underground is to present works by emerging playwrights in the Black Box Theatre below the Laura Pels. In past years they have presented promising plays by Stephen Karam (Speech and Debate) and Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews.) Currently onstage is this ambitious work by Jeff Augustin, which deals mainly with Haitian refugees in Miami. We meet seven vivid characters. Sula (Carra Patterson) is a young pregnant woman from Haiti who struggles to delay her baby’s arrival until she is in the U.S. She is haunted by nightmares about her past. Her baby does not cry. Joel (Maurice Jones) is the son of the landlord who has turned his apartment house into a de facto refuge for immigrants. Carolyn (Deirdre O’Connell) is a nursing home aide with 11 children who lives in one of the apartments and who reluctantly takes Sula in. Vishal (Chris Myers) is the resident drag queen who sometimes sits for Carolyn’s children. Madison (Crystal Lucas-Perry) is Joel’s stereotypically yuppy cousin who hires Sula as her nanny. Manuel (Gilbert Cruz) is a dying patient of Carolyn’s who is estranged from his children. The Man (Carl Hendrick Louis) is the figure from Sula’s past who figures prominently in her nightmares. Some of the topics touched upon include the struggle to preserve a family heritage, the corrosive effects of gentrification, the disappearance of God, the attempt to escape one’s past, the efficacy of voodoo and the pain of dying alone unloved. I wished that the playwright had narrowed his scope and presented fewer but more fully developed themes. Some of the actors had trouble maintaining a Creole accent. Andrew Boyce’s flexible set design is simple but effective. Jennifer Caprio’s costumes are appropriate. Giovanna Sardelli’s direction cannot hide the unevenness of the material. Augustin shows promise if his control can catch up with his ambition. Running time: 2 hours including intermission.

Note: Judging from tonight’s theatergoers, Roundabout’s marketing to nontraditional audiences has been far more successful than LCT3’s. Tickets are $5 cheaper ($20 vs. $25), but I doubt that difference is significant.