UNCLE LEMON’S SPRING
at the Second City
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Steve Totland adapted the book, and Jessica Thebus directed the production. Both are pursuing their PhDs in performance studies with Galati at Northwestern, and both already display traces of the ingenuity and dramatic insight that permeate his own adaptations.
Adapting such a story is tricky business. The plot must be condensed, for even a children’s book is too long to enact in full. The dialogue must be doled out judiciously to the actors. And the narration must be turned into dialogue, which is particularly difficult in this case because the story is told by Letty, who could end up doing almost all of the talking. To solve this problem, Totland and Thebus borrowed the technique Galati recently used in an adaptation for Steppenwolf of Anne Tyler’s Earthly Possessions, which is also narrated by the main character. Galati had two actresses portray Charlotte Emory, the woman abducted during a bank robbery and forced to accompany a robber to Florida. One actress participated in the action; the other spoke to the audience about the action, often relating Charlotte’s own thoughts.
