Her superb first play, “Crimes of the Heart,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and now appears frequently on college dramatic literature courses, but Beth Henley’s name below a title is not a guarantee of high quality. Her recent plays, some of which premiered in Chicago, have often not lived up to this gently feminist author’s prior achievements.
But if there is one world that Henley can write about with unrivaled insight, it’s the familial traumas of middle-class Southerners (especially women) who are lost somewhere between the first blush of youth and the regrets of a midlife crisis. Her style is Southern Gothic, and Henley is one of few writers who can fill a play with tragic small-town strife and still leave an audience with a warm grin at the final curtain.
Although it is neither her best nor her most popular work, Henley’s “The Wake of Jamey Foster,” her third major play being revived at Footsteps Theatre, is certainly one of Henley’s better plays. And while Jean Adamak’s well-meaning but overly restrained production (the last show before Footsteps leaves its longtime Andersonville home) never really rises to the comic heights that this script would ideally engender, this is an honest and entertaining revival.
The coffin of Jamey Foster, deceased, occupies the stage for much of this play, which uses the occasion of the wake to bring together a collection of wacky, stressed-out Southerners with bitter domestic agendas. Since we learn that Jamey was an unfaithful husband whose fatal accident involved a cow and much booze, the unusual title does not detract from the darkly comic tone.
The best performance here comes from the thoughtful, funny and emotionally complex Aaron H. Alpern, who plays Brocker Slade, a local eccentric with romantic aspirations toward Jamey’s widow, Marshael (Melissa Van Kersen). But there is also nicely tuned comic work from both Suzanne Jacobs, as a troubled orphan named Pixrose, and Kathrynne Ann Rosen, who plays “Collard” Darnell, Marshael’s free-spirited but insecure sister. Robert Buscemi nicely encapsulates the dweeb Willy Foster, a classic Henley uptight loser.
Maintaining a laudable balance between realism and stylized comedy, Adamak makes clear visual and emotional sense of all of the insecurity wandering around the tiny Footsteps Theatre, deftly avoiding those hackneyed Southern stereotypes that often plague off-Loop Chicago theaters trying to be funny with this kind of material. Like almost all of the past work at Footsteps, this is an earnest and honest show with palpable heart.
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“The Wake of Jamey Foster”
When: Through June 13
Where: Footsteps Theatre, 5230 N. Clark St.
Phone: 773-878-4840
