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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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Richardson, as decked out in William Ivey Long's intentionally frumpy white dress and with her hair pulled tightly back, looks much like the iconic portraits of Dickinson that remain. But she hasn't unlocked the humanity behind the eyes that suggested a painful playfulness, at once a distrust of society and the established order and yet submission to them. And because these themes resonated throughout her work, which Luce samples freely and copiously in his writing, the person who's explaining her life to us never quite seems to have lived everything she claims. Missing from Richardson's portrayal are those stacked layers of dark and light, the unstated admission that one may never exist without the other. Given the vaguely episodic structure of the play, however, this is crucial—we must believe that the homey hostess who greets us in the first scene, doling out blithe chit-chat about her family and the neighbors around her, is the same one who will, eventually, recite "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" with an absolute lack of irony. It's the same person separated by some years, true, but Dickinson's poems show those seeds were planted long before her own mortality bloomed. But rather than be consumed with dark, Richardson's Dickinson is preoccupied with light. Her performance is, in a way, winningly optimistic, as if each setback Luce documents—and, from romantic travails to publishing failures, there are many—is to be waved aside as unimportant. To the extent this pays dividends, it's only in the earlier scenes, when Dickinson is still being established. It seems tactically clever to create this house in our minds only to demolish it later, but that doesn't quite happen. As a result, the Dickinson in Act II, who endures a variety of heartbreaks, is irreconcilably at odds with the girl we've known for so much of the evening. And when she delves into the blackness, you don't fear she'll come out of it again—you already know, from your first interactions with her, that she did. It's clear enough what you're watching, but Richardson and Cosson, whose simple and declarative staging is generally fine, fail to answer the questions of why, or what you're supposed to learn from it all. That makes it all the more perplexing that Richardson truly shines in the poems, unveiling the myriad nuances she otherwise eschews in the dialogue. She slides into the verse so naturally that you barely notice she's done so until your mind reels with haunting imagery of the Church or her family, or your heart is squeezed by a publisher's failure to recognize her singular, even innovative, style. It's sort of the jukebox musical problem (understandably), but in reverse, where only the lyricism can convey what the soul has no other language for. This version of The Belle of Amherst, then, is far from a loss, but it's nowhere near as complete or compelling as it can be. (Even the living room set, by Antje Ellermann, looks artsy but cheap.) Looming oppressively over the role is the ghost of Julie Harris, who originated the role on Broadway and made something of an industry touring with it for years. She even filmed it (onstage) for television; watching it today, it presents a Dickinson who's choked with sadness from the start but puts on a stalwart face that can be ripped away to reveal deeper truths later (and, of course, is). Harris's interpretation was epic and intimate at the same time; Richardson settles merely for the latter. That's certainly an appropriate tack—the Westside is hardly a big venue—but even simplifying Dickinson down to ordinary human size doesn't have to mean sacrificing the color that made her a poetic pariah before her death and a tragic figure after it. We know, when Richardson is immersed in the verse, that both women can inhabit the same being at the same time. But because they rarely do here, this belle too often does not peal resoundingly enough.
The Belle of Amherst
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