Play contains ‘wonderful female roles’
ON STAGE What: Crimes of the Heart Where: Phoenix Theatre, University of Victoria When: Today through Feb. 24 Tickets: $26 ($20 for seniors and $15 for students) at the Phoenix Theatre box office (250-721-8000) Crimes of the Heart was selected to appear in the Phoenix Theatre’s 2017-18 season more than a year ago, many months before the MeToo movement began dominating the news. But the timing of the University of Victoria production of Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 play couldn’t be better.
“We weren’t predicting this,” said director Peter McGuire, who teaches acting, directing and production in UVic’s theatre department. “But the timing is incredible.”
The play follows the stories of the three Magrath sisters — Babe, Lenny and Meg — whose family home in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is a central character. It’s where the sisters look back on their lives, and what did and did not come of them.
The mores of the South also play a part in this dark comedy, whose central characters have all committed crimes of the heart (one sister actually commits a crime, a major plot point).
Henley’s beloved play and the subsequent, Oscar-winning 1986 film for which she wrote the screenplay are well-decorated. McGuire, a 30-year veteran of stage productions large and small, said he chose the play for a variety of reasons. The writing is top-shelf, which was the prime motivating factor. He also loved what a play by, for and about women represented.
“As an instructor, I’m always mindful of the fact that the gender ratio is really skewed,” McGuire said.
“There are some great plays for women, but there aren’t many great plays for women.”
McGuire considers Crimes of the Heart to be one of “a couple of dozen really good plays” with strong roles for women. The fact he can name only a few playwrights who write rich, complex female characters (Tennessee Williams and Picnic playwright William Inge are the others, he said) means that number is hundreds too few, he said.
“This play has been on my list for a few years. Looking around the department, and watching which actors were coming up, I knew I’d have the right cast for this play. This made sense — it has six actors and four wonderful female roles.”
McGuire told his actors to enjoy their Crimes of the Heart experience, since it might be their last for some time in such a supportive environment, with roles among the best ever written for women. “It’s a tough business to survive. But if you do find your way and figure things out and hang in — you’ve got to be able to hang in — it’s a very rewarding business, industry and art form. But you’ve got to have your stuff together to do it.”
A female-dominated household is familiar territory for McGuire, who grew up with five sisters in Burnaby and said finding sanity in the din of his house was difficult.
“When you’ve grown up in a house full of women — and it wasn’t just my sisters, I had a lot of female cousins, and my sisters always had a lot of friends — it was like a revolving door. I became the kind of kid that went out the door in the morning on my bike to get away from it all.”
Burnaby around the time McGuire was growing up was not so different from the area of Mississippi where Crimes of the Heart is set. Racism factors more deeply in the play than it did in his childhood, but the bluecollar, working-class family attributes are similar. “The Magrath house the play is set in, I don’t think they ever locked the door. That was the same for me — I don’t remember the door to our house ever being locked. People could come and go.”
McGuire praised set designer Stefanie Mudry, who created the early-1970s look he wanted. With the house acting as the heart of the play, it was important to get right every detail of the dysfunctional Magrath family.
“She has come up with a beautiful, wonderful, detailed set. I watched our dress rehearsal audience really dial into that. I had a friend there who wanted to get up on the stage and look at the old stove because she remembered it from her childhood.”
Items are on the set to serve the story, but also to catch the eye of the audience. “People are going to think: ‘Wow, that’s my aunt’s kitchen’ or ‘I grew up in that kitchen.’ That helps ground the production. It brings the audience in and includes them right away in the storytelling. They feel at home with this family. I want the audience to recognize themselves in this location, with these characters.”