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Friday, April 29, 2011
Arts / News Theater review: Agnes of God
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 11:19 AM
Tempestuous women, baby killing, hypnosis, and stigmata are all in the pot for John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God. But as the current Carolina Actors Studio Theatre production shows us all too well, that pot has to be very artfully stirred. How else is one to explain why such an excellent cast generates so much heat but so little light?
Based on a lurid 1977 murder case in Upstate New York, Agnes wriggles itself into a pre-trial exploratory period when Dr. Martha Livingstone is sent to a convent to determine whether Sister Agnes is fit to stand trial or clinically insane. Toss in a Mother Superior trying to protect Agnes from the probing of the doctor and the punishment of the law, and all kinds of tensions are set loose in the one-on-one confrontations between science and religion. Those stigmata strengthen the brew, hinting that the child’s conception may have been the result of a miraculous visitation.
Of course, Pielmeier’s most sensational alteration of the real-life story was also his most wrong-headed. Who in the room can see the point – or the infallibility – of a divinity that would bother to beget a child that was destined to be strangled at birth?
Perhaps that was what prompted director Michael R. Simmons to make one of his most glaring mistakes, speeding up the pace and repeatedly overlapping the heated speeches of the combatants – so that in the cyclone of emotions we could forget how flimsy the underpinnings of the Mother Superior’s faith really are. Better to point up the clashes between faith and reason, innocence and evil – all brought to a boil by the confusion between healing and hurting, coddling and protecting.
So the CAST production is in exciting one, but not as moving as the one I saw in 1992 at Old Courthouse Theatre up in Concord – ten years after the Broadway production but still long enough ago for me to have forgotten the intricate mysteries of the plotline and revel as much as anyone else in the suspense. Cynthia Farbman is implacable in her pursuit of the truth yet increasingly tender toward Agnes as she learns more about her past. Her ancient grudges against Catholicism and the unhappiness underlying her cigarette habit are vividly captured.
As satisfying as she was earlier this season in the Theatre Charlotte production of Steel Magnolias, I dare to say Lauren Dortch Crozier is a revelation as Sister Agnes, if only for her angelic singing voice, perfect for the role. She is nothing short of astonishing in the climactic hypnosis scene, reliving the night when her baby was born. Farbman is no less important to the impact of that scene, so you wish to savor her work there, too. Best of all may be the work of Paula Baldwin as Mother Superior Miriam Ruth, fiercely protective of Agnes, shrewd enough to pierce Livingstone’s armor, yet open to the idea that the doctor’s treatment might bring her niece the relief she so desperately needs. We also get an inkling that Mother Superior is being affected by her encounters with hypnosis and psychotherapy. Changed.
That’s exactly the kind of arc that’s missing from Livingstone. When Farbman tells us at the end of the evening that she has gone back to confession, it comes completely out of left field – not as a destination that the vessel of her investigation has been subtly carrying her to all along. True, some of that evolution might have occurred more easily if Baldwin had given Mother Ruth a softer maternal edge as she probed Livingstone’s apostasy and unhappiness.
If Baldwin could do with some softening, Dortch could certainly make the question of whether Agnes is naïve or insane more of a toss-up in the early going. In that roughening process, she might also get louder, the most urgent need in the whole production prior to the denouement.
Although there’s a special dispensation for alcoholic beverage, the lobby makeover by Buddy Hanson in CAST’s final production at Clement Avenue is up to the company’s usual standard. I’m also very impressed with the final set design at the boxagon by Tim Baxter-Ferguson, combining zodiac and Rorschach motifs. Look up and you’ll see a clutch of arches criss-crossing the ceiling. The gothic stained glass at the four corners of the hall by Aiden Baxter-Ferguson, a couple of them dramatically ruptured, stamp the tone more definitively.
Still, I wish director and co-lighting designer Simmons had insisted on opaque, stained-glass windows so that more light could have shone through. Much the same can be said of the whole production.
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