MANILA -- PACT just opened Lee Blessing's "Eleemosynary, an elegant and witty little play in some ways as challenging as its title. Go there if you particularly enjoy a hard-fought game of Balderdash or Scrabble, have a daughter and mother close by (geographically or emotionally -- take 'em if you dare) or just love eloquently written, smoothly directed, brilliantly acted theater. But it won't be regular.
Blessing is one of those modern playwrights who believes regional theater is, indeed, the backbone. Three person cast, virtually no set, ergo no set changes, minimum props and costumes: all of this makes it doable for the smallest, most budget-constricted theater. Why, the program doesn't even include an insistent word from the director on the depth of the play's meaning, nor any of those bio's describing reams of experience and how grateful the actor is just to be part of anything that moves. It's a play without prink, of little hebetude, but with some witty withershins.*
There is included, however, a glossary* of archaic, wonderful, and often unused words -- if you can say it that way -- words that one could only chance to meet in the finals of The National Spelling Bee, adult division.
Nor will it be easy. In "Eleemosynary," Blessing's minimalist attitude not only asks the director and cast to fill the stage, he asks the audience to fill in the meanings. This is not a multiple-choice, short-answer quiz. The breezy narrative is hardly linear, rarely chronological. So the grandmother, mother, and daughter interact over space and time, tell stories to the audience, and reminisce to better explain/understand themselves. Avoidance seeps in everywhere. Who's in charge? In this family, intimacy is a matter of switching from AT&T to MCI Friends and Family, Where's Mom?
In the beginning it's hard to find a someone to identify with without resentment. But Blessing has more in mind, and Director James Floss with three extraordinary performances by the strong female cast alternates tension with more than enough unraveling humor and in the end it's hard not to root for all of them.
Lynne Safier Wells plays Dorothea, the eccentric, control-mad mother with a cynical daffiness, a partnership of sneaky shrewdness and naive vulnerability. Gregarious, yet droll, she's kind of a Bea Arthur in Reeboks, who wants to control every whiff of her's and everyone else's existence.
Her daughter, Artemis (Christina Jioras), a strapping woman, Unjolly but with a slicing sense of humor, was abandoned by Dorothea years ago for Dorothea's enchantment with eccentricity. Artie is cursed with unmitigated memory: she can't forget anything that's happened. As you might expect, this has left her with some fears and bitterness. Dorothea never wants to stop controlling her offspring; Artie never wants to start. She twice abandons her daughter, Echo (Bonny Johnson) in favor of a career in scientific research targeting concrete results. So Dorothea raises Echo as we ramble through the necessary losses.
Bonny Johnson as the spick and-span Echo gathers strength right up to the National finals, a gloriously acted scene that settles a lot more than the Spelling Bee Champ.
What is selfish? What is selfless? Sensitive? Insensitive? The women visit perilous cruelties on each other, yet Blessing treats each with affection. Avoidance? Control? Which is which?
"Eleemosynary" won four prizes at the 1996 LA Drama Critics Awards, one for writing. Mr. Floss's tiny production is so good, so well acted, that in the end, you want to sit right back down and watch again. That delicate sense of rue which strung it along will be missing, and you'll laugh more, harder, and at lines unnoticed in the first viewing.
* - See the program
"Eleemosynary" is a Pacific Art Center Theatre production. There are performances Friday and Saturday nights through Feb. 7 with a matinee Sunday, Feb. 1. For more information, call 442-1533.