59 E 59 Street Theaters (Primary Stages)
August 28, 2009
Morgan Wycks
mwycks@nyconstage.org
There is nothing wrong with a writer’s being in love with the sound of their own voice. I mean if they didn’t have a voice then where would they be? However, when the love of that voice sends the writer meandering and in search of an ending, the results can leave one exasperated. Such is the fault of dramatist Cusi Cram whose voice in her play, A Lifetime Burning, doesn’t allow much room for the characters to differentiate themselves as well as suffering from the problems mentioned above.
Living on a rapidly diminishing trust fund, Emma writes a memoir snapped up sight unread by a mega-publishing house – money problem solved. (Never let it be said that connections aren’t everything.) Advance word has her book ready to hit every best seller list across the country. There’s only one problem. Most of the memoir is totally false. More than anyone else, this small glitch maniacally upsets not the book’s editor, but Emma’s sister, Tess. The question arises did Emma write the memoir while off her meds for bi-polar disease. She asserts that her relationship with a youth whom she tutors and with whom she also sleeps has awakened her kinship with his Mayan ancestors thus acknowledging what is obviously part of her true heritage, or at least half of it.
The idea of a dishonest memoirist’s exposure is rife with dramatic possibilities not to mention lots of humor. Except for some funny and pithy observations about the American public and what is and is not reality spewing from the characters’ mouths regularly arriving like bus placards during rush hour, Ms. Cram chooses to step away from the crux of the conflict. The two sparring sisters let the immediate problem fall by the wayside to hash out old problems, y’know like, divorce and whom did mom and dad love best. There are stretches when we have no idea where the story is headed except for a resolution that we can see from far away.
The usually more than able director Pam MacKinnon (why did I think this was directed by Leigh Silverman?) allows herself to be trapped by the material using staging 101 tactics to relieve some of the more static arguments. The often referred to expensive apartment looks more like Ikea meets Pier One though I do not blame designer Kris Stone who obviously was working with a limited budget. But David Weiner’s lighting design could have helped more here.
The actors are a funny mix. As the hunky youth, Raul Castillo does what’s expected of him but that’s about it. As the powerhouse editor, Isabel Keating’s bizarrely accurate turn combines Tina Brown with Tiger Brown attired in Edith Head and earns the biggest laughs of the evening. The annoying Tess is played by the stridently annoying Christina Kirk who can’t resolve how to act the annoying repeated phrases given to her by the author. Then there’s the very attractive Jennifer Westfeldt as Emma. Here’s an actress with a lot of potential and she often rises to the occasion in several sequences of the play. But she has a terrible habit of posing as if some photographer in the audience kept saying “over here, Miss Westfeldt.” Had this tic added up to some character driven pathology I might have bought it. As it is she comes off slightly neurotic instead of bi-polar.
Ms. Cram clearly has issues that she vehemently wants to dramatize but writing about the dishonesty of a memoir has unfortunately discolored the honesty of her writing.
…end