Theater review | In "Eleemosynary" at Stone Soup Theatre, family spells heartache

Theater Review |

Lee Blessing's somewhat overlong, 1985 one-act play "Eleemosynary" is intensely focused on the architecture of emotional neglect and abuse crossing three generations of highly-intelligent women.

Seen from another angle, it is also the story of how ties that bind even the most estranged people are never sundered, though at times it is intentionally hard to tell in this drama if that is more tragic than a clean break.

Blessing ("A Walk In the Woods"), a man, astutely observes how the denial of one character's potential and destiny transmogrifies into a peculiar burden for her daughter. The latter, in turn, becomes absent from the life of her own child, who later dreams she can heal her pain by forcing a reconciliation between mother and grandmother.

Stone Soup Theatre and director Mari Geasair's production of "Eleemosynary," mounted in the company's intimate DownStage space, skillfully modulates the ups and downs of understated hopes and ill-concealed disappointment that go on for decades.

On a bare stage in front of a startling and oddly stirring wall of large, painted letters from the alphabet, we meet Dorothea (Maureen Miko), whose youthful dream of attending college was stymied by a father who pushed her into an arranged marriage.

Dorothea's restive mind turns imposingly flighty and cold toward her daughter, Artie (Kara Whitney), who eventually becomes pregnant and is told by Dorothea that soon she "will just be something a child needs."

No surprise that Artie eschews motherhood and seizes upon a career in scientific rationalism. She abandons her child, Echo, to Dorothea, who predictably feels freer to be kind and loving to her than to Artie. Equally predictable is the way a tightly-wound but rapidly maturing Echo (Kayti Barnett) takes on the lonely responsibility of loving her grandmother while patiently awaiting Artie to come through.

Echo's preternatural ability as a spelling-bee whiz kid is an interesting bridge between all parties, leading to a sad, dramatic peak but a happier ending that seems a little rushed and inauthentic. Still, the cast is uniformly excellent, delivering sharply delineated characters whose thoughts, paradoxically, are far from the truth in their hearts or, in Echo's case, are desperately chimerical.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com