Playwright: Georgette Kelly from the Jeanette Winterson novel. At: New Leaf Theatre at the Storefront Theatre, 66 E. Randolph. Tickets: 312-742-8497; www.dcatheater.org; $25. Runs through: July 17
I'm told Lighthousekeeping is a magical novel with a huge following, so I wanted this world-premiere stage adaptation to enchant me. It didn't because I couldn't hear it, or at least not enough of it. Sure, I could hear the sound of words, but I couldn't understand them. I missed important exposition and events in this narrator-driven story, and I missed them for two reasons.
First, director Jessica Hutchinson and scenic designer Michelle Lilly chose to use the Storefront Theater in a so-called alley configuration, with the audience on two sides and the stage running the length of the theater between them. This meant that half the time the actors were facing away from me, speaking to the folks across the alley in an acoustically unfriendly hall. Second, the actors frequently spoke at the level of an offstage intimate conversation. This is all too common in smaller Off-Loop houses: actors and directors forget that projection is necessary even in intimate spaces. Acting is not real conversation. Audiences cannot fill in the blanksif there are blanksas directors and actors can, having heard the lines over and over in rehearsal.
It's a shame for me more than for the production, because I got enough of Lighthousekeeping to find it intriguing but not enough to understand its mysticism. It's a story inside a story inside a story, although the narrative of the life of Silver, the 20th-century orphan hero, and of her mentor, lighthouse man Pew, and of Babel Dark, the 19th-century son of the lighthouse builder, all are supposed to be true. Obviously, repetitive cycles of behavior are important involving "fallen" women (in the Victorian sense), opportunistic men and illegitimate children. Also important are personal and communal narratives as means of self-definition, and there's a great deal about love, duality and nature/nurture. Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Darwin make cameo appearances to expound on the latter two issues.
The physical staging is quite fine, notwithstanding how it exacerbates acoustical issues. Lilly's expansive and imaginative scenic design features second-story platforms at either end of the alley stage, topped by semi-abstract pinwheels of bricks and sculptings suggesting refracted light. Among the principal performers, Ron Butts as Pew is warm and charming, Tien Doman and Caroline Phillips as Silver/Young Silver have earnest and waif-like appeal and Daniel McEvilly's Babel Dark is all tormented sensuality. They offer good performances in Rachel Sypniewski's costumes, appropriate both to period and character. However, if you adapt a novel to the stage, retaining large chunks of third person narration and telling far more than you show, then clarityboth figurative and literalneeds to be job one. I didn't dislike Lighthousekeeping, but it wasn't all there for me.