Women out of time

Hugh Leonard’s Love in the Title, now playing at Shipping Dock Theatre, is
certainly a women’s play, but not the kind anyone is familiar with. Three
female actors play three generations of an Irish family’s women. But in
Leonard’s fantastical plot, the women aren’t exactly reunited, because they
didn’t know each other at these ages.

            It
is 1999, and 37-year-old Katie is visiting the legendary Clough-a-Regan stone
in the fields of Corcamore (might as well be Glocca Morra). She is accompanied
by her 30-year-old mother Triona, as she was in 1964, and Triona’s 20-year-old
mother Cat, who envisions herself as she was in 1932. Got that?

            The
women discuss their lives and relationships with understandable mother-daughter
conflicts, but not entirely the normal kind, because the eldest is the
granddaughter and the youngest is the grandmother. In one sense, that paradox
is entirely fitting. Cat, Katie’s grandmother, is only 20 and perhaps should
seem the youngest because she comes from a simpler age and society.

            It
is not only Cat’s more rigid Catholicism, more sheltered life, and young hope
for the future that make her seem the most innocent of the three. She lacks the
educated experiences and doubts of her granddaughter and the sophisticated
rigidity and unsatisfied expectations of her daughter.

            Triona
finds her mother naive and her daughter immoral and disappointing. Mother and
grandmother disapprove of Katie’s lifestyle (no spouse or children but several
sexual affairs). Katie, a writer working on her doctorate and an artist here to
paint the stone, is somewhat disdainful of Cat’s religious faith and bitterly
resentful of Triona. Evidently, Triona’s marriage to Katie’s father soured
because of Katie’s birth, and Katie feels that her mother ignored her and never
loved her.

            Do
they achieve resolution and loving acceptance? Nope. But we do get witty,
entertaining and insightful discussions of changing times and attitudes in
Ireland with memorable reflections on a more universal landscape. There is more
affection and understanding than opposition in these women’s relationships but
no hope of consensus. Katie is also a novelist and says that she usually has
“love in the title.” There’s much love in these three compelling lives, but not
much for each other.

            Under
Barbara K. Biddy’s understated direction Kerry Young plays Katie with dominant
intelligence but pouty neediness; Maureen Mines is an elegant, cold, and
disillusioned Triona; and Ruth Hollinger is an adorable but unhappy Cat.

Love in the Titleby Hugh Leonard,
directed by Barbara K. Biddy, plays at Shipping Dock Theatre in Visual Studies
Auditorium, 31 Prince Street, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2
p.m. through July 3. $12 to $22. 232-2250, www.shippingdocktheatre.org.

Theater note

There’s a storm brewing. Rochester Broadway Theatre League
has announced that it will bring megahits The
Producers and The Lion King next
season in topnotch productions. But regional producers have to take what they
can get, and many touring “Broadway” shows now feature novice, non-Equity
casts. Production-values are “Broadway,” although The Music Man toured here cutting out Broadway designs, like
SUNY-Geneseo grad, Tony-award winner Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting. Actors
Equity is polling its members on a strike but hoping to avoid one in June when
their contract is up for renewal. Let’s hope that Equity and the League of
American Theatres and Producers can settle without killing the road tours.

This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2004.