Theatre Review: A Lovely Sunday For Creve Couer Breaks Your Heart
When you are a woman there is a societal pressure to get a man and a family. The older you get, the more that pressure becomes sheer panic, and the prospect of true romance diminishes. Now, you are in a “NEED” to settle so as to assure your emotional/ literal stability. If you think times have changed, Tennessee Williams’ A Lovely Sunday For Creve Coeur will remind you that different eras can carry the same error.
The heart of this play is divided by three characters, which is why I will divide my review accordingly:
Dorothea (Jean Lichty)– Lichty provides a tragic performance because she embodies how beauty is not enough for true love. She is a “Southern gal;” demure in posture, delicate in sensibilities, and divine in dreams. Her voice smolders as she fancies over Ralph, and the wonderful, exclusive worlds he has introduced her to through their private tryst. As a viewer, you feel gutted by her delusions for this romance, and cannot help but rethink the many time you or your girlfriend fell for a man that gave you access and adventure, but with the sole, hidden agenda of making you fall for him body and soul without ever falling back. As the play progresses and you watch her fantasy world crash into the harsh reality of being used/ courted for “fun,” your heart breaks at seeing her settle for Bodey’s brother.
Bodey (Kristine Nielsen)– Nielsen gives Bodey a caring, generous nature that can teeter into overbearing. Yet, her eagerness to defend and protect Dorothea and her neighbor, Miss Gluck (Polly McKie) stems from a deeply saddening realization that she will never be married, have kids, or live a life of romantic wooing. She takes care of grown adults like they are kids, and she does it out of the kindness of her heart. Yet, Nielsen assures to slide in quiet, subtle moments when you see that Bodey would have loved to be loved. Yet, this was the early 1900’s, and women’s looks were more than just judged: they were condemned. As we find Bodey in her 50’s, we laugh and silently with her that she is banking all her hopes to have children on her equally aged friend Dorothea.
Helena (Annette O’Toole) – Annette O’ Toole shines as Helena, and, through nuance, shows why she is the most controversial or pryingly snarky characters of them all. While each woman, especially Miss Gluck, undergoes battles of grief that, literally, leaves them physically weakened, she fights any depression that marks her as a decrepit spinster. She wear her glamor in her posture, alone, and plans social moves and parties so as to assure that no one thinks that her single-hood or age has taken her inner spark. O’Toole turns Helena into a flame of wit that both warms and burns other characters because, despite her inner sadness, she does not understand how these women refuse to take care of themselves both stylistically and spiritually.
As Miss Gluck roams around screaming in German and sadness, she becomes the epitome of how much mourning life’s tragedies and your choices can turn you insane. All these women represent how our dating life, as ladies, socially fractures our identity as human beings. With a cluttered set, Director Austin Pendleton does well to make you feel like they have been stuffed away from society because they could not get a man: either at all or while young. While we define tragedies as physically altering, Pendleton uses Williams’ text to show some are a process or systemic. To Buy Tickets For A Lovely Sunday For Creme Coeur Click Here. Located On THEATRE AT ST. CLEMENT’S 423 WEST 46TH STREET. It is 1 hour and 40 minutes without intermission, and plays until October 21.
