MY SOUL TO KEEP
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And I have to admire the company for tackling an issue like sexual abuse, daring to say what many are too afraid or ashamed or angry to say: that children do not easily overcome sexual abuse, and that these horrifying traumas come back to haunt adults 20, 30, or 40 years later. A recent Tribune article estimated that “one in three girls suffers some kind of sexual molestation before the age of 18.” That means there are plenty of wounded adults out there who would benefit from knowing that they are not alone. Without a doubt, this play will reach many such survivors. Certainly, the night I saw My Soul to Keep, there were plenty in the audience moved beyond words by Dennis’s story, people whose eyes teared up during the second act, when Dennis’s character, Reta, first confronts her feelings about the father who raped her as a child. Some later admitted during the Thursday-night discussion after the play (conducted by a psychologist who specializes in sexual-abuse cases) that they too had been victims of sexual abuse.
On the other hand, I cannot say that Dennis’s play is flawless, or that it will move–or even interest–anyone who did not suffer some sort of abuse as a child. Parts of My Soul to Keep are awkwardly written, much of Dennis’s dialogue is flat and pedestrian, and the story, especially the first two- thirds of it, just pokes along, despite some wonderful performances by Melinda Tomelleri, Erin Creighton, Tom Overmyer, and Chuck Spencer. For all of her sincerity as a playwright, and as an actor, Dennis has written a play that, with the exception of a harrowingly intense ending, is wooden, stiff, and inhibited.
You might have expected all the men to be like Reta’s father, Wally, the unrepentent child molester. Even as he lies in a hospital dying of brain cancer, he still lusts after the passing candy stripers. Chuck Spencer plays this slimeball so well that by the end of the play you can’t help but hate him. (Which may explain why he doesn’t make an appearance at the discussion afterward.)
