By Barry Blake
For the Times-Standard Friday, February 21, 1997
MANILA - For many, the memory of Gertrude Stein is a black-and-white photograph of a large, matronly, peasant-looking woman, her hair done up in a housewifely bun.
Usually, in the same photo another woman lurked about, small and weathered, both hands on her purse, tight, stiff, angled like a woodworker's tool, her face half-shaded by a picky little hat.
We remember the other woman was Alice B. Toklas, an unforgettable name that rings like chimes in the garden. We remember that Gertrude wrote something or other, or was it that she talked about writing something or other? Or was it that she talked about others writing something? And didn't a lot of writers and artists visit them? Was she the one who called Hemingway and that bunch the "lost generation?" And wasn't it Gertrude who commented famously on what Shakespeare meant-when he spoke of a rose by any other name?
This enigmatic photograph of misplaced memories explains itself in the - let's get it right up front - beautifully lit (SR Carnefix), acted (Peggy Metzger and Pam Lyall) and directed (James Floss) Pacific Art Community Theatre production of Win Wells' "Gertrude Stein and a Companion," which just opened at the Manila Community Center.
It was Hemingway who dubbed the inhabitants of 27 Rue de Fleurus 'Gertrude Stein and a companion,' and it was he who found Alice B. Toklas in all her testy silence, "frightening."
By illuminating the elliptic Alice, Wells reveals the jolly and immense love the two women had for each other - not much shown in the photograph - and the love they had for the English language - not visible at all - for as Alice said shyly to Gertrude You are almost unknown, certainly almost unread." And as Gertrude said about Alice, Alice always knew the perfect thing to say. And she always said it. And it was always perfect." But Alice mostly said it only to Gertrude. (Alice's autobiography is written, not surprisingly, by Gertrude, and just as naturally, Alice's autobiography is all about ... Gertrude.)
Words had a mysterious life and a will of their own for Alice and Gertrude. The play is an explanation of how things became the way the were before they were the way they became, to speak in their idiom. Their love for words; was consuming. Gertrude once wrote that she really did not know "that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences. The only proper noun she ever loved was Alice. Maybe Pablo. Maybe one other.
The identity of the "one other" is just one. of the small sweet tensions that spins through the surreal but tidy construction of the play. To turn these two women inside out, the script asks that they share the narrative, play other parts, speak and interact with the audience, live and die and live again to relive yet another scene. That this happens so effortlessly, like water silently lapping to its level, is a credit to Floss' superb direction. Floss always allows the play to take its own time: the witty rejoinders and giggly portmanteaus nudge it along. Sad and absurd blend tenderly together.
This blend, perfected in the extraordinary talent of Lyall as Toklas, simply astonished the audience. Ms. Lyall has made a career out of looking askance and measuring out the wheedle and cajole. To these formidable comedic skills she adds a fidgety, overwrought worry swamped by the fatigue of being needed (of loving to be needed) by Gertrude. Apparently, Alice moved with the silence of a nun, acted with the larceny of a used car salesman and often reacted with the rage of a shark. More than a handful, she was an armload.
Ms. Lyall captures perfectly the aging, goofy genius and raging tenderness of Toklas, so perfectly that it's tough to imagine "Gertrude Stein and a Companion" ever getting a better production than this one, anywhere or anytime. If you like acting, you'll love this performance.