ELEEMOSYNARY
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In this time of big-budget holiday blockbusters, overladen with special effects and elaborate sets, Interplay’s production of Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary dazzles with its simplicity and grace–one of those rare shows that make acting, directing, and writing look incredibly easy. The performers work so seamlessly with the script that we’re amazed to realize by the end that in about 90 minutes the show has covered almost 80 years in the lives of three characters.
Eleemosynary is composed mainly of monologues and short scenes that trace the lives of three generations of women. Blessing’s script weaves past and present, recalling key incidents and showing the development of each woman’s life in relation to the others. At the beginning we are introduced to Echo (Martie Sanders), a young woman seated at the bedside of her grandmother Dorothea (Caitlin Hart), who has suffered a stroke. Echo’s mother, Artie (Pamela Webster), left her long ago and now communicates with her daughter primarily through routine telephone calls, quizzing her for an upcoming spelling bee with tough words like “eleemosynary.”
