Linda Purl (Photo by Lore Photography)
Reviewed by Philip Brandes
Rubicon Theatre Company at the The Karyn Jackson Theatre
Through April 6.
RECOMMENDED
“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness,” observes guitar-strumming accompanist Will Huse by way of introduction to Linda Purl’s riveting performance in Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love & Madness, a world premiere staging from Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company. “Look at your three best friends,” Huse continues, “If they’re okay—it’s you.”
With this humorously succinct opening, author Sharon Scott Williams cements our connection to an uncomfortable but widespread reality—at one time or another, chances are we’ll have to navigate the challenges of coping with mental illness in someone close to us. Few accounts, however, have captured the experience with Williams’ literary eloquence and shrewd observational perception.
Adapted from her moving memoir, Williams’ autobiographical drama offers a firsthand portrait of growing up under the shadow of her schizophrenic mother, who suffered a sudden psychotic breakdown in 1957, when Williams was only eight. The story focuses on the world-changing psychological impact of this event on young Sharon, and her evolving perspective and understanding of a damaged relationship that spanned decades.
As a memory play, the show utilizes an essentially solo performer format, with a single actor providing first-person narration and multi-character enactments of pivotal episodes.
To meet the show’s requisite precision and versatility, director Anson Williams turned to his fellow early-career “Happy Days” alum, Linda Purl. Given Purl’s accomplishments in theatre, television and film (her Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire on this same Rubicon stage years ago still ranks as the finest I’ve seen), it proved an ideal casting choice to launch the piece.
Sharon’s narrative voice is rooted in her suburban origins in the late 1950’s Southern railroad town of Salem, Virginia. “I was too young to see the signals flashing before my eyes,” she recalls. “It didn’t feel like a special day when an unseen hand reached down out of the sky and stole my mama’s mind right out of her head. But that’s what happened.”
Making the most of the author’s poetically descriptive powers, Purl brings heartbreaking immediacy to the tragedy of mental illness. Young Sharon’s initial terror and bewilderment at her mother’s madness and institutionalization gives way to a heartbreaking lost innocence by the time she returns home a few months later: “Mama’s cure hollows her out like an autumn gourd. She ghosts about the house in a daze, drained of even a vague curiosity about our goings on.”
Wry Southern comic detail effectively lightens the tone, as in Sharon’s description of the wicked witch of an aunt who took over their household during her mother’s confinement: “Her teeth are much too small for her mouth, like kernels of white corn at the pointy end of the cob.” Short verses from “Crazy Mama,” an original tune sung and whistled by Huse on guitar, weaves the episodes together with an old-timey blues feel.
Purl deftly handles instant transitions between 16 clearly differentiated characters who appear in the course of Sharon’s narrative, some with only a few lines of dialog. Her finest achievement, however, is in adapting the narrator’s delivery and tone to her stages of life—we feel we’re taking a life journey with her as the performance builds to a knockout finale of redemption and healing between a grown-up daughter and her mom that drives home Sharon’s earlier assertion that “We Southerners specialize in lost causes.”
Purl’s virtuoso performance in “Crazy Mama” will strongly resonate with anyone touched by or concerned with mental health issues. Nevertheless, the adaptation retains too many episodes from the playwright’s memoirs that, however charmingly recounted in their own right, become distracting digressions in a real-time dramatic staging. Between the harrowing opening sequence of the mother’s breakdown and young Sharon’s first visit to see her in the hospital, for example, nearly an hour has elapsed.
It’s been said that it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through a camel’s eye than for a solo show to recover from an intermission, and trimming is already intended for future productions. While more work is needed, there is greatness here.
Rubicon Theatre Company, The Karyn Jackson Theatre, 1006 E. Main Street, Ventura. Wed.-Sat., 7 pm, Wed., Sat.–Sun., 2 pm; thru April 6. www.rubicontheatre.org. Two hours, 30 minutes with intermission.
