[ssba]
Trying
Reviewed by Neal Weaver
International City Theatre
Through Sept. 14
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In 1967, when she was just 24 years old, playwright Joanna McClelland Glass took a job as secretary to Judge Francis Biddle, who was nearing the end of a long and illustrious career. He was one of “the Philadelphia Biddles,” whose ancestors arrived in America in 1681. A proud Groton and Harvard man, and “a radical aristocrat,” Biddle, in his time, had been named Solicitor General and then Attorney General by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Because he supported FDR’s New Deal, he was dubbed a traitor to his class.) And he served as chief prosecutor during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. But now he was 81 years old, and his health was failing. He was imperious, curmudgeonly, arrogant, bullying, and determined to have the last word in any dispute. She, on the other hand, was a young, determined, resourceful, and resilient young Canadian, who’d grown up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where temperatures could fall to 40 below zero for weeks at a time. She was determined to make a success of her job, and not to be buffaloed by her irascible boss. In some respects, they were evenly matched.
Glass’s play hinges on the gradual coming together, despite the odds, of two ill-matched and unlikely people. It seems like the formula for a familiar, crowd-pleasing comedy-drama. But it’s saved from sentimentality because there is much more going on. It’s a confrontation between an old man coming to the end of his life and career, and a young woman who’s just beginning hers. He knows he needs her to keep his life in order, but with each step she takes in becoming necessary to him, she’s also taking over some of his already limited powers. And that awareness makes him even more cantankerous. As he is consciously moving toward death, she becomes pregnant, bringing new life as his fades.
Glass spent decades trying to capture Biddle in a play, but all her efforts to depict him at the height of his powers were still-born, until finally she decided to concentrate on the period in which she actually knew him, and worked beside him every day. The result is the present play.
It’s clever, literate, and larded with shrewd wit, providing an actor’s field-day. Director John Henry Davis gives the piece a splendid production: subtle, nuanced, and unpressured, and cast it beautifully. Tony Abatemarco’s Biddle is peppery, charismatic, funny, and, finally, as time and age take their toll on him, quite moving.
As Sarah Schorr (the name Glass gives to her own character), Paige Lindsey White is a perfect foil for him: thoughtful, intelligent, humorous, and spunky, but willing to subjugate herself to his needs—up to the point where her own dignity and autonomy are threatened.
JR Bruce’s handsome set features enough books to stock a couple of libraries, and Kim DeShazo’s costumes are unobtrusively right.
International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., thru Sept. 14. (562) 436-4610, InternationalCityTheatre.org
