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Cinnabar makes emotional mark in excellent ‘Collected Stories’ By David Templeton
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write much better than I talk.� In Donald Margulies’ 1996 play Collected Stories, now playing at Cinnabar Theater, that hilariously chagrined, sevenword sentence—“I write much better than I talk�—is how young Lisa Morrison (Anna Bullard), an insecure English student and would-be writer, introduces herself to her professor Ruth Steiner (Carol Mayo Jenkins), a legendary author of modern short stories who teaches writing at an unnamed New York City college. Lisa worships Ruth, to the elder woman’s irritation, and when she is invited to her professor’s apartment for an off-campus tutorial, she stammers and babbles through the first several minutes of the meeting, much of it variations on “I can’t believe I’m sitting in Ruth Steiner’s apartment!� For her part, Steiner—played by Jenkins with a comfortably world-weary, playfully sharp-edged authority—can’t quite believe that the shallow chatter-box before her is the same student whose first writing has so impressed her. “You don’t look like your story,� Ruth remarks, bluntly. Over the course of six years, traced in six beautifully crafted scenes, the playwright charts the relationship of these two women through several believably detailed evolutions: teacherto-student, employer-to-assistant, colleague-tocolleague, friend-to-friend and ultimately rival-to-rival. It is Ruth’s youthful relationship with another writer, the real-life poet Delmore
Schwartz, which adds vital pathos and narrative drive to Margulies’ effective drama. To be sure, there are obvious comparisons between Ruth’s early adulation of the fading Schwartz and Lisa’s worshipful reaction to Steiner (and make no mistake, both of these relationships are love stories, of one kind or another), but Ruth’s ancient fling with the long-dead Schwartz also becomes part of the plot, after Ruth tells Lisa the whole story one late night after a long business trip. Having exhausted her own short life for material on which to draw (“I’m not angry with my parents anymore. Fuck them.â€?), the up-and-coming Lisa decides to base a novel on her mentor’s secret May-September romance. Lisa feels she has been given permission, recalling her teacher’s uncompromising advice: “If you have a story to tell, tell it. Don’t flinch. Just do it.â€? Ruth, on the other hand, responds to the novel as if it were a burglary, a theft of her own most-cherished memories. The result is a battle of wits and words that plays out like a Greek tragedy, or like one of Ruth’s own famous short stories: unsentimental and sad, with gutwrenching ending that leaves one wanting desperately to know what happens next. Directed by Elizabeth Craven, the Cinnabar production is confidently paced and terrifically acted. Bullard, recently seen in Marin Theater Company’s Magic Forest Farm, is nothing short of astonishing, moving the fragile Lisa from frightened kitten to ferocious predator without losing track of the characters’ underlying desperation for approval. Jenkins is also magnificent. Last seen at Cinnabar in Enchanted April, Jenkins convincingly portrays another kind of character arc, as the childless Ruth initially warms to the role of guide, guru and intellectual “mother,â€? but then finds her composure slipping away as her protĂŠgĂŠ gains lit-world stardom far more quickly than she did. Finally, it is Lisa’s passive-aggressive seizure of the older writer’s backstory that pushes the relationship to its limits. The set, by David R. Wright, is the one small drawback to the production. The detailed clutter of Ruth’s apartment is appropriately grounded, but the unnecessary addition of looming cardboard cutouts of famous female writers, hovering in the background, is distracting and silly. The sound design by Jim Peterson is clean and clever, a mix of street noises and phone rings that actually seem to be coming from where they are supposed to be, rather than from overhead speakers, and the costumes by Kate Magill are spot-on, saying as much about the characters’ metamorphoses as the script does. This is very rich stuff; the line between adaptation and theft, inspiration and autobiography are tricky, potentially arcane matters. The question of who owns the story of a person’s life could have ended in boring polemics and stilted conversation. In Margulies’ hands, these questions and conflicts explode onto the stage with a raw emotional power that is as slyly funny and knowing as it is heartbreaking and real.
PUSHING EDGES Current Paintings
Etta Deikman
May 29–July 5 Reception: Saturday May 30, 4–6pm
6671 Front St/Hwy 116 • Downtown Forestville 707-887-0799 • 11-6 Thurs–Mon (closed Tues & Weds) quicksilvermineco.com
‘Collected Stories’ runs Friday–Saturday through June 13 at 8pm with special matinee performances May 31 and June 7 at 2pm. Teen mixer, June 11 at 7pm; $15. Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. $20–$22. 707.763.8929.
THE BOHEMIAN
05.27.09-06.02.09
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