"Collected Stories": Whose Life Is It Anyway?

by Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer

New Rep’s production of “Collected Stories” is theatrical heaven, a miraculous melding of profound writing, superb direction and impeccable acting, resulting in the best work this company has done in a handful of seasons. Playwright Donald Margulies is perhaps best known for his 2000 Pulitzer-winning “Dinner with Friends” and the recent Broadway production of “Time Stands Still” (so fine a piece that it was revived, again on Broadway, a year after its initial run, with an incandescent Laura Linney and most of the original cast intact). “Collected Stories”, first performed off-Broadway four years earlier, and on Broadway in 2010, is unaccountably much less renowned, despite having been itself a finalist for the Pulitzer and a Drama Desk nominee as best play in 1996.

The most astonishing fact about the play is that it’s taken this long for it to appear on a local stage, apart from a production in the western part of the state a decade ago. This may be in part because its original off-Broadway run and its more recent Broadway iteration were so short-lived, while several deep-as-a-birdbath mega musicals continue to pack in adoring crowds. It may also be due to the deceptively fluid naturalism of the work; not for a moment does the dialogue seem inauthentic or inappropriate, and this can be deceptive. Without divulging too much of the plot, it can be said that elements of the play are reminiscent of “Educating Rita” (roles being gradually reversed), “All About Eve” (adulation morphing into rites of succession), and especially “Doubt” (a theatergoer left to decide for herself or himself who is a victim or a villain, and how consciously this occurs).

At the base of this work, about the collection of stories, are some rather heavy dilemmas, notably the questions of who owns a person’s life story, privacy invasion, and the inevitable march of time. Margulies complicates the moral question himself when he makes use of real facts from the life of poet Delmore Schwartz and his fictionalized portrayal in Saul Bellow’s “Humboldt’s Gift”. Thus we’re dealing with several layers of borrowed (or burgled?) narrative. While a writer is expected to write about what she or he knows, when is including someone else’s story a tribute and when it is appropriating a life?

The part of Ruth, a writer, teacher and mentor, has been played by such acting luminaries as Uta Hagen, Helen Mirren, and Linda Lavin (on stage, in a Tony-nominated performance, and in a televised version on PBS). Bobbie Steinbach, a local treasure, inhabits the role. As her student and mentee Lisa, making her New Rep debut, Liz Hayes (so memorable in the 2010 SpeakEasy Stage production of “Adding Machine: A Musical”) holds her own in this tightly wound two-hander. It’s terrific to see where their verbal virtuosity and the consistently mesmerizing direction by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary mesh. The technical aspects of the production, most notably the set by Jenna McFarland Lord and costumes by Tyler Kinney (one is tempted to call them “seamless”) also help to make this a resounding success.

Toward the end of the play, Ruth makes the decision to unbolt her door, in a reversal of sorts of a certain Ibsen play, leading to an inevitable confrontation between creative freedom and the duty to claim responsibility for one’s actions. How infrequenty these days is an audience so challenged. Theatrical heaven indeed; number this critic among the saved.