When I first watched The Rainmaker as a kid, I remember wishing that Lizzie would run away with Bill Starbuck, the bombastic charlatan who bilked her family and unlocked her womanhood. Hey, he was Burt Lancaster in the movie! Would you want Kate Hepburn to spend the rest of her life with Wendell Corey and the prairie dust?
In the current CPCC Summer Theatre production, deftly directed by Carey Kugler, it’s all turned around. Robert Simmons is even more excessive and phony than Lancaster, and as Starbuck’s rival, Deputy Fife, Michael Nestor is more ardent than Corey in saying the two magic words he should have said to his ex-wife years ago.
What really changes the whole ecosystem of N. Richard Nash’s drama is Kevin Campbell’s extraordinary portrayal of H.C. Curry, Lizzie’s dad. Unlike Wallace Ford, the Hollywood dad, Campbell has an instinct about what he’s getting for his hundred bucks. It isn’t the possibility of rain in a brutal drought. It’s the possibility of his daughter.
Heather Wilson, a CL Newcomer of the Year in 1992, merely proves that Lizzie Curry is a role she was born to play. She’s as much at her peak of excellence as Campbell and Nestor. I’ve often wondered whether CP would ever produce a drama that might be counted among the best of the year in Charlotte. Now they have.
This article appears in Jul 7-14, 2009.
