“Collected Stories” Is a Powerful Tale

by Jana Pollack, New Rep Reviewer

In New Rep’s “Collected Stories,” a complex, intricate relationship takes shape, evolves, and explodes in an extremely intimate setting. In one wonderfully realized room, we see professor and accomplished writer Ruth Steiner (the amazing Bobbie Steinbach) and writing graduate student Lisa Morrison (the equally talented Liz Hayes) meet and get to know one another. Although the play consists only of scenes between these two women, the power balance is always shifting and the stakes are always high.

This is a common tale – student surpasses teacher – that comes freshly alive in this production. Director Bridget O’Leary, who consistently produces powerful work, has helped her actors create two unique, completely realized women. When Liz first enters, there is just one moment of worry that she is perhaps a caricature of a harried graduate student. But within a few lines of dialogue it is clear that Ms. Hayes knows Lisa in and out. Ms. Steinbach captured my attention from her very first appearance, moving her shoulders to the beat of an old jazz record as she finished working on a typewriter.

As the play continues, it raises questions about youth and aging, truth and fiction, friendship and, ultimately, ownership. Ms. Steinbach expertly removes layers, scene by scene, letting Lisa in little by little, while Ms. Hayes conversely begins to put up thin and then thicker walls. By the end, each woman appears quite changed from her initial appearance, but we can see that really these strengths and weaknesses were there all along.

The passage of time is expertly depicted by costume designer Tyler Kinney, as one woman come into herself and another struggles with letting go. Ultimately, the audience is in the difficult position of choosing a side. As an audience member, I was completely wrapped up in the moral implications of the story, and in the days since seeing the play I’ve thought a great deal about the sadness of what the relationship between Ruth and Lisa becomes. “Collected Stories” is good theater: consistently entertaining and inherently complex.