THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507290059
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
THE AMERICAN SOUTH is still the ripest source for writers looking for colorful, tragic and eccentric characters.
It is with some degree of trepidation, though, that one approaches yet another memory play about a Southern family.
Despite some self-consciously ``poetic'' passages, Nancy Nilsson's new play ``All I Could See'' evolves into a palpable theatrical evening with believably struggling characters. It is the fourth entry in the current ``New Plays for Dog Days'' presented by the Generic Theater in Norfolk.
``All I Could See'' is set in a small Alabama community at the end of the Great Depression. Under the direction of Joe Sasso, the actors give a gentle and thoughtful reading that effectively counters some of the melodrama in the script.
Olivia and Tom are a married couple who face adjustments they have avoided until now. Joel Harberli brings a fine Tom Joad-brand of weariness to the job-seeking husband, a man who hasn't had clean hands in years. His wife wants him to give up being an auto mechanic and work at the local hardware store. He dreams, instead, of moving to Detroit and getting a job working in auto parts, maybe even airplane parts.
Frankie Little Hardin brings a wealth of bitterness to the role of Olivia, a woman who had to give up teaching when she first became pregnant. Although she adores her favorite child (Gloria, now 19 and a drop-out from nursing school), she heartily resents the other (10-year-old Tracy, who feels unloved). Now, she faces the prospect that her husband might run off to Detroit alone if she doesn't waver in her refusal to move the family. Olivia takes it out on the young Tracy.
They are the best-developed characters among a group of the usual Southern ``types.''
The next-door neighbor is a ditzy old lady named Vertna. Shirley Becker chooses to give her dignity rather than eccentricity.
Grandma is the resident wisecracker who uses her age to badger everyone in sight. Betty Brigman goes for laughs, but they aren't there in the rather repetitious way the part is written.
Aunt Mae (Anne Morton) is thwarted in her hopes of snaring a husband.
Maggie Chambers is the young Tracy, the child who feels merely tolerated by ``big people who hover like mountains.'' Chambers and Van Michael Hughes, as the local free-spirited kid, are somewhat unaffected child performers.
It falls to the older Tracy (Sandra Holcombe), who remembers the entire play as a flashback, to deliver the more unfortunately affected lines. She has to say something like ``this red earth where my wild heart first knew life.''
In spite of such occasional airy efforts, the author has, for the most part, mastered the language of the genre. She has effectively created a poignant familial conflict. by CNB