Later, when the full story of Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath is told, it will be viewed as somehow contrived that the world premiere of a play about a suicide was staged at a black box theater called BeBe. That it happened in Asheville will only be a suprise to those who don’t know this town.
Elisabeth Gray was superbly cast as the sole stage actor in Edward Anthony‘s sombre and hilarious tragedy, the whole of which takes place in the last ten seconds of poet Esther Greenwood’s life. Has an actor ever before ventriloquized a gas oven? Convincingly? Lovingly even? And how can this housewife’s asphyxiation become a cooking show with recipes comprised of those she loved and feared?
The prospect of such an enterprise seemed iffy at best. The culmination of Plathstock, a week of literay events based on the life and work of perhaps the third most famous literary suicide (Hemingway, Woolf …), it seemed a stretch. Gray stretched and reached and gripped and held, as did Anthony’s script. Throughout the drama the others in Greenwood’s life appear via silent film, images screened in the kitchen window of a wondrously quilted set. Gray speaks for every character—husband, father, mother, child and Anya the Babylonian Whore. The script is comically surreal. The actor takes us by storm.
Directed for stage and film by John Farmanesh-Bocca, choreographed by Farmanesh-Bocca and Vincent Cardinale, with a set by Luke Haynes and lighting by J.P.Hess, the production is a gem in the crown of BeBe Theatre and a testament to everything Giles and Susan Collard have endeavored to create there. Commissioned for performance in Oxford next fall, the play will tour the U.S. in the interim. You can stil catch the show on Saturday, March 31, 7:30 p.m. or Sunday, April 1, 5 p.m. Phone 254 2621 for reservations, likely to be necessary if word gets out. $16, $8 for students. A little dark for kids and with one (entirely appropriate) expletive that would probably merit an R rating.
Applause. Applause. Applause.
—Cecil Bothwell, staff writer
I saw the show last night. Wish I Had A Slyvia Plath is wonderful. It poignantly blends humor and the tragedy of the mind’s reality. Elisabeth Gray gives a performance full of wisdom and maturity. In moments, I found myself caught in the thoughts of “Esther Greenwood”. My only advice: Attend.