Playwright: Madeleine Olnek. At: Caffeine Theatre at the Berry Methodist Church, 4754 N. Leavitt. Phone: 312-409-4778; $20. Runs through: April 1
Artists of all disciplines, be warned. Write your autobiography, even if the manuscript is kept sealed until your death, and leave instructions that it's to be opened only by disinterested parties sworn and affirmed. Disregard this precaution and you leave yourself vulnerable to scurrilous speculation arising from the stratagem dubbed the "Stalin was a sweetie" ploy in The History Boys. You'll end up like Emily Dickinson, in other words.
What's undisputedso faris that this prolific American poet lived from 1830 to 1886 in Amherst, Mass. She never married, adopted an increasingly reclusive lifestyle in later life and wrote hundreds of poems reflecting an originality as startling for its time as it remains enigmatic over a century later. Her letters ( intimacy being communicated through correspondence in those days ) reveal a sensitive woman of uncommon education but melancholy temperamentit also being an age of widespread infectious diseases making for a society preoccupied with untimely loss.
This wasn't enough, howevernot for surviving kin eager to reap commercial gain from the myth of the mysterious lady in white, nor for subsequent hoards of sycophants, parasites and other snoops. Adhering to the cultural prejudice mandating that Jack may do just fine without a Jill, but a solitary woman is a perversion of nature, literary analysts have searched for sexual subtexts to augmentor eclipsethe inconceivable portrait of a spinster content with ( can you imagine? ) intellectual pursuits. It's not enough for Madeleine Olnek, either. Unsatisfied with recounting the details of Dickinson's abiding attachment to companion and sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, and allowing us to invoke or ignore lesbian overtones as we prefer, Olnek instead inundates what could have emerged a tender tale of girlish confidences with a shower of collegiate commentary.
This extraneous material is conveyed in sketchy scenes populated with generic gay-camp caricaturessome of them sympathetic, most of them not: men and women in transvestite drag, spanky-spanky romps in fluffy petticoats, giggly double-entendres ( such as "Her breast is fit for pearls/but I was not a diver"tee-hee ) . Under the direction of Meghan Beals McCarthy, Jessica Bennett and Dana Black succeed in preserving some of the heroines' dignity, while the rest of the ensemble attack their garish personae with the gleeful gusto of American Lit undergraduates on a post-final exam spree.