Miss Lulu Bett

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Miss Lulu Bett

at WorkShop Theater Company

Reviewed by Erik Haagensen

March 19, 2010

Photo by Gerry Goodstein

In WorkShop Theater Company's production of Zona Gale's 1920 Broadway hit "Miss Lulu Bett," the recorded sound of a chiming clock is utterly mismatched with its onstage timepiece, booming far too loudly and deeply. Sadly, that proves a metaphor for director Kathleen Brant's misguided bare-bones production of this play, the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.

The title character is a youngish spinster who runs her married older sister Ina's household in a small Wisconsin town in return for room and board. That household includes Lulu's egregiously overbearing brother-in-law, Dwight; Lulu and Ina's mother, who is no fan of her son-in-law; and Lulu's nieces: teenage Diana, who is discovering sex with her boyfriend Bobby, and the extraordinarily obnoxious Monona, a child of about 10 or so. Completing the dramatis personae are the older Mr. Cornish, a kindly music-store owner who has his own designs on Diana, and Dwight's rake of an older brother, Ninian, who sweeps into town for a visit and upsets the apple cart by falling for Lulu. This leads to the rather forced incident that drives the play: When Ninian and Lulu playfully repeat wedding vows to each other in front of Dwight, they find themselves accidentally married, because Dwight is a justice of the peace. Deciding to stay married, they go on a honeymoon, but Lulu returns when Ninian confesses to her that he may be a bigamist. Changed by her experience, Lulu tries to return to her former life but finds it harder than she expected.

The selfish Dwight and Ina patronize and exploit Lulu, behavior that could be characterized as emotional abuse, and Gale is clearly most interested in depicting Lulu's awakening and liberation. But the tone of Brant's direction skews Gale's balance of comedy and drama toward a strained version of the former. Most of the actors suffer, giving awkward performances that hone in on a surface trait and then emphasize it relentlessly. Only Laurie Schroeder, as Lulu; Dan Patrick Brady, as Ninian; and Mary Ruth Baggott, as Diana, achieve any success in creating an inner emotional life. But Schroeder seems too robust in her early scenes, Brady is insufficiently rakish, and Baggott feels too contemporary. That last is an overall problem too, with Brant having little success in evoking a sense of period or culture.

Presented by and at WorkShop Theater Company, 312 W. 36th St., 4th floor, NYC. March 18–April 3. Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m. (Additional performance Mon., March 22, 8 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.workshoptheater.org.