Playwright: Keith Reddin
At: Eclipse at Victory Gardens
Phone: (773) 871-3000; $18-$22
Runs through: May 30
Historical events can have a profound effect on the intimately personal in our lives. One watershed event in American history was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For those of us old enough to remember, images of that time are grafted onto our brains permanently.
It is this kind of concept that playwright Keith Reddin has chosen to explore in his tightly knit, provocative, and telling human interest story, Frame 312. The title refers to a missing frame in the Zapruder film, the 'home movie' made by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander of the Dallas motorcade in which the president was riding when he was fatally shot. According to Reddin's fictionalization of events, the film was first viewed by a trio from Time-Life magazine (who did in fact, publish stills from the film within its pages): an editor, a ballistics expert (who discovered certain discrepancies that may prove the impossibility of a lone gunman), and a young secretary, Lynette Powers, who was called in to take notes. Lynette is just a young girl with early 1960s dreams of a landing a husband, a home in the suburbs, and raising a family. When she sees what is essentially a snuff film, she is sickened by what she witnesses. Because Lynette is neutral, her editor gives her the task of delivering the film into the hands of the FBI. What shakes the foundation of Lynette's life though, is a secret she harbors for decades (until her children are grown and her husband is dead) about the film and the subsequent version of it that surfaces after the Warren Commission made its famous determination regarding Kennedy's fate. I won't reveal that secret here, or how that secret slowly and surely eroded Lynette's life, isolating her from the more common hoi polloi who surround her. It's Reddin's thesis to demonstrate the powerful impact the historical can have on our personal life, and he renders that thesis superbly here, with economy and power.
Lucky for him (and director Steven Fedoruk) that he has a very talented cast and capable creative team to bring his story to life. In a casting coup, Eclipse has managed to find two actresses to portray the 1960s and 1990s Lynettes who are nearly identical. If they weren't on the stage simultaneously, one might assume they were the same person. It's not just their appearance, but also the abilities of the actresses (Nora Newbrough and Donna McGough, respectively) to essentially play the same character, one young and idealistic and the other jaded and tired of harboring a secret. But each retains a certain quality that makes the audience believe with certainty that, at the core, they are the same.
This is the kind of theater I like to recommend. It has it all: artistry (in the way it deals with human emotions and explores universal themes) and craft (this is a tight, entertaining, and thought-provoking script). This is a wonderful beginning to Eclipse's tradition of celebrating the works of one playwright each season. The season of Keith Reddin bodes well.