Playwright: Joanna McClelland Glass
At: Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: (773) 871-3000; $30-$35
Runs through: May 2
When a play has this many words, those words had better be good—articulate, eloquent, the aural equivalent of a book-you-just-can't-put-down. Joanna McClelland Glass' words are all of these things—even more so for being gleaned from her own decades-old memories, then shaped into a succinct (and under Sandy Shinner's direction, unhurried) 2-1/2 hours of introduction, revelation and leave-taking. And it's all accomplished by only two voices (with occasional interruptions via telephone and correspondence).
Of course, her duet features two formidable voices. Francis Biddle is a man accustomed to exercising authority, by virtue of his status both as a former Attorney General in our nation's capital and his blue-blooded lineage. Sarah Schorr is a rugged populist from the frontiers of Saskatchewan, who does not take easily to bully and bluster (which is why the wise Mrs. Biddle—an offstage presence—saw in her a solution to the convoy of more sensitive secretaries put to rout by their employer). Their task in this 1967 winter is to record the 81-year-old Biddle's memoirs for his publisher before death robs both of their posterity—a prospect the subject accepts with ambivalence.
Any author would be tempted to sentimentalize the interpersonal dynamic, maybe adding a gift exchange or a few hugs. Glass resists this impulse—these are actual people, and she retains their integrity to the end, a decision that endears them to us with an intensity and immediacy far surpassing shallow stock types in the Pygmalion/ Educating Rita/Driving Miss Daisy mode. When the play finishes with Sarah and her likewise young husband about to have a baby, we HOPE the Biddles give her a generous severance bonus. (Glass never tells us, however.)
Kati Brazda has developed a reputation as an actress whose total commitment to her role commands attention within minutes of her first appearance onstage. This means that Fritz Weaver, though nominally the production's 'Name Player' (a burst of well-meant but oafish applause greeting his initial entrance on opening night) has his work cut out for him. Neither lets down the side, instead—to adopt Sarah's phrase—'lacing the skates and hitting the ice' to forge a riveting microcosm of American history on the brink of social change.