Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart is a hotbed of meaty female roles and charged emotion. The current revival of the play, at the Laura Pels Theatre, tries to tug at the audience’s heartstrings, but it does little more than pluck them under Kathleen Turner’s directorial debut.
The play occurs in the fall of 1974, in Hazlehurst, Miss., when the McGrath sisters are reunited at a stressful moment in each of their lives. The eldest sister, Lenny (Jennifer Dundas), has become old before her time since designating herself as their grandfather’s caretaker. Meg (Sarah Paulson), the middle sister, has returned after running away to California, and has only a failed singing career, a slew of forgettable men, and a stint in a mental institution to show for it. The youngest, Babe (Lily Rabe), who has recently been arrested for shooting her abusive husband, is the cause for this unexpected reunion.
It has been over 20 years since Henley won a Pulitzer Prize for this play, and it appears that her work has not been able to stand the test of time—today, it is difficult to imagine why the play won such a prestigious award in the first place. Under Turner’s direction, scenes that originally might have been off-beat are instead quaint. The play has touching moments blended with outrageously dark humor, but there seems to be no unified underlying tone.
Turner also has trouble maintaining consistency, both among the actors and between the cast and the play itself. As the busybody cousin, Jessica Stone, provides much of the comic relief. Her presence is larger—and louder—than life, and she feeds off of the imperfections of her family. But her performance, which often borders on caricature, stands in stark contrast to the naturalistic acting of her fellow actors and the realistic set that was intricately designed by Anna Louizos.
Rabe portrays the stoic murderess with ease, though she often seems uncomfortable with Babe’s childlike movements. Babe’s character is someone who has not let go of her inner child, but Rabe’s performance suggests that Babe has a lack of mental development.
Paulson (most recently seen on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) is the least convincing of the sisters. Meg could be viewed as the protagonist of the play, but Paulson’s portrayal presents Meg as the least interesting and most fake, underdeveloped character. When Meg laughs at a particularly depressing family development, Paulson elicits an awkward silence from the audience, rather than a shared snicker.
Though audience members may originally have come to the theater to witness Turner’s directorial debut, it is Jennifer Dundas’ performance that keeps them in their seats. Dundas embodies the heartbreakingly sweet Lenny with every ounce of her being, including her voice—it has an elderly quiver to it which compliments her southern drawl. She breathes an exuberant life into Lenny, as we see her transformation from a meek pushover into an independent woman finally willing to fight her own battles. After a rare moment of expressed rage, Lenny’s eyes become large with excitement and her body seems as though it might explode with exhilaration.
But even Dundas’ earnest portrayal cannot pull this play out of the Hallmark quicksand into which Crimes of the Heart falls. Scenes of silence and heart that should be poignant somehow ring false with overblown sweetness. An evening designed by Kathleen Turner should have a bite to it, but instead, the audience is left with too much sugar in their mouths.
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