Performance Helps Veil Tale's Flaws

Writer and teacher Ruth Steiner, played by Lee McKenna, right, and young Lisa Morrison (Kristin Cantwell) in Tapestry Theatre's "Collected Stories." (Photos By Bob Morrison)

When a playwright doesn't introduce his primary message until close to the end of a two-hour-20-minute drama, one must ask whether he should have chosen another subject, something he could successfully build a story around. This problem diminishes Donald Margulies's "Collected Stories," now being staged by Alexandria's Tapestry Theatre Company.

Maybe Margulies just couldn't think of another way to stack his scenes, managing to get to the point of the play while providing ample background. (Note to playwright: Look up "flashback" in the dictionary.) Fortunately, a compelling performance by Lee McKenna emerges from Margulies's murky meanderings, and she will hold your interest until the writer gets around to introducing the fundamental issue at stake.

McKenna plays Ruth Steiner, a Greenwich Village writer and teacher who has enjoyed professional literary success over the years. A star-struck student named Lisa Morrison, played by Kristin Cantwell, becomes part of the older woman's life, and the play follows their relationship over six years as it evolves from teacher-student to mentor-acolyte and finally to deep friendship.

For much of the play, Margulies seems to study the tensions that accompany the changing relationship as the younger woman starts getting published and the power shifts, making the two writers professional peers. That might seem especially striking here because of the way McKenna skillfully calibrates her character's evolution from the prickly, impatient and imperious professor to the vulnerable woman who opens up her past and inner life to the younger writer.

But Margulies changes that in the next to last scene when he reveals that Lisa has been appropriating the older woman's past, using Ruth's personal remembrances of her young life in the Beat-era literary world of 1950s New York, particularly her affair with a famous, long-dead poet. Lisa has churned her friend's memories into a novel that the industry expects to be a hit. The play suddenly becomes an examination of the ethics of appropriating, or maybe pilfering, another's life for one's own gain. That Lisa took intensely private memories that Ruth refused to write about and did not tell her mentor that she was preparing them for public consumption adds insult to the injury. Margulies adapted his tale from a real-life incident, a famous 1990s court case in England, but he focuses less on the larger issues of ethics and legalities than he does on the personal impact of betrayal on the characters he created here.

By the time the act is exposed, the aging Ruth is ill and McKenna provides several poignant moments as her character struggles to summon the power to roar her indignation, rage and sorrow. It is a combustible mix that McKenna superbly manages without melodrama. As for Lisa, Cantwell's performance is largely played on the surface, offering little hint about her character or motivation. The fact that she has ignored her friend during her illness is a clue, but whether Lisa is the villain she seems or the sincere purveyor of homage, as she claims, remains unclear. Whether the fault lies with the actor or with director Rusty Clauss, more shading is needed for us to reach a full understanding of this character's actions. The duo mesh well in their extended scenes, however, spurred by McKenna's outstanding work, and their energy never flags, so it is absorbing to learn about Ruth's "Collected Stories" as they spill out.

However, Clauss's one-dimensional apartment setting seems rather shabby for a successful woman, a weakness accented by drab, static lighting. The design never addresses the passage of time, a fundamental weakness. The odd music track, featuring poorly edited instrumentals from the wrong era, also undermines the sense of time and place, making McKenna's performance all the more remarkable for its effectiveness.

"Collected Stories," performed by Tapestry Theatre Company, concludes this weekend at the Lee Center's Kauffman Auditorium, 1108 Jefferson St., Alexandria. Showtime is 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday, with a matinee at 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets or information, call 703- 960-3398 or visithttp://www.TapestryTheatre.com.