October 4, 2008
Dear Peter and Shannon,
I had the great pleasure of seeing Shannon's performance last night (Friday), and am full of warm gratitude and admiration and appreciation for all your wonderful work, including that of the stage crew (coincidentally, I sat next to Rick and Jane Barron, whom I'd not met before, and we had some delightfully robust conversation about the play and NEYT.) As a life-long (and it's been a long life!) lover of Emily and her poetry (and having lived across the street from Emily's house for 6 months in 1997!) I've been interested in this play's existence for a long time, but hadn't seen it done since I watched the original TV production by Julie Harris several decades ago, when my appreciation for ED had not, perhaps, reached the depth or height it has reached by now. So I was intrigued to find no fewer than three opportunities to see the play within the past week! First, last Sunday, at Peterborough Players, in NH, with Lindsay Crouse, after which I got hold of the Julie Harris tape and watched that again, and then, finally, last night at NEYT.
So I want to tell you right off that, in my never-humble opinion, Shannon's performance was far and away the best of the three! No kidding! In fact, Lindsay Crouse and Julie Harris seemed to do all they could to make me dislike the play, turning the ED I thought I knew...she of delicate sensibility and shy demeanor and wry, laconic, understated wit...into a blustering, stage-filling, histrionic, often yelling (yikes! no, not that! please! ED is the AntiChrist of Yelling, in my book), overly theatrical prima donna...none of which rang true for me, and all of which were probably inevitable, considering the training these professional actresses had grown up with. Alas! Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but those were the characteristics that spoiled their performances for me.
Think of how relieved...and riveted... I became when Shannon came on, from the beginning, with her look of authentic shyness and uncertainty...even a touch of real fear in her eyes! ....ah, I thought, now I can watch Emily for a change....and as the play progressed, she continued to portray a personality much closer to my image of ED than either of those professional superstars did. Of course, she gave us a breathtakingly virtuosic performance in more ways than I can mention here, with the memorization marathon only one of her many multilevel talents. She was magnificently patient in her pauses, incredibly expressive in her stares - showing her inner emotions with such subtlety, I thought it was amazing that such a young woman had developed such confidence to know that "less is more" in those moments - they were powerful! And there were several gems of "beats" or "scenes" that were just so well planned and performed...can't begin to list them now. And not least of all were several of her readings of the poems. I have never heard, or even imagined, "I'm nobody..." read like Shannon did....I think it is the definitive reading....should be required watching in classrooms across the country! After the kids have had a chance to try it themselves.
And the moment where she says (I'm paraphrasing): "Is there anything more than love and death. If you know, tell me its name" (for me, that is THE iconic declaration of the play). Shannon came down really hard on that, with sudden ferocity, and I was soooo moved, since I felt that she also found that a signal moment, and wanted to make it explode for the audience. The combination of the meaning of the words, the surprise impact of her reading, and my sense of personal rapport with her interpretation affected me powerfully... it was all I could do to keep from bawling at that moment....and that's no metaphor.
(I still have some reservations about the play itself, and even a few aspects of the way ED is rendered even in this performance, but they do not diminish the overall satisfaction I had with my two hours enthrallment last night.)
I'm sorry I've gotten so carried away as to imagine you'd want to read all this. 'Bottom line" is that Shannon's skill and maturity as a performer is impressive, and I am grateful that I had a chance to see Emily at 53 portrayed by an actress at 17, since I think that embodies the real secret of ED's genius, and her life-strategy.
More power and artistic opportunities to Shannon and NEYT. Both are a gift to - and from - our community. And of course, to Steven and Peter who have always been a gift to the community, and have made it all this possible.
With appreciation,
Ben Wise
Dear Peter and Shannon,
I had the great pleasure of seeing Shannon's performance last night (Friday), and am full of warm gratitude and admiration and appreciation for all your wonderful work, including that of the stage crew (coincidentally, I sat next to Rick and Jane Barron, whom I'd not met before, and we had some delightfully robust conversation about the play and NEYT.) As a life-long (and it's been a long life!) lover of Emily and her poetry (and having lived across the street from Emily's house for 6 months in 1997!) I've been interested in this play's existence for a long time, but hadn't seen it done since I watched the original TV production by Julie Harris several decades ago, when my appreciation for ED had not, perhaps, reached the depth or height it has reached by now. So I was intrigued to find no fewer than three opportunities to see the play within the past week! First, last Sunday, at Peterborough Players, in NH, with Lindsay Crouse, after which I got hold of the Julie Harris tape and watched that again, and then, finally, last night at NEYT.
So I want to tell you right off that, in my never-humble opinion, Shannon's performance was far and away the best of the three! No kidding! In fact, Lindsay Crouse and Julie Harris seemed to do all they could to make me dislike the play, turning the ED I thought I knew...she of delicate sensibility and shy demeanor and wry, laconic, understated wit...into a blustering, stage-filling, histrionic, often yelling (yikes! no, not that! please! ED is the AntiChrist of Yelling, in my book), overly theatrical prima donna...none of which rang true for me, and all of which were probably inevitable, considering the training these professional actresses had grown up with. Alas! Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but those were the characteristics that spoiled their performances for me.
Think of how relieved...and riveted... I became when Shannon came on, from the beginning, with her look of authentic shyness and uncertainty...even a touch of real fear in her eyes! ....ah, I thought, now I can watch Emily for a change....and as the play progressed, she continued to portray a personality much closer to my image of ED than either of those professional superstars did. Of course, she gave us a breathtakingly virtuosic performance in more ways than I can mention here, with the memorization marathon only one of her many multilevel talents. She was magnificently patient in her pauses, incredibly expressive in her stares - showing her inner emotions with such subtlety, I thought it was amazing that such a young woman had developed such confidence to know that "less is more" in those moments - they were powerful! And there were several gems of "beats" or "scenes" that were just so well planned and performed...can't begin to list them now. And not least of all were several of her readings of the poems. I have never heard, or even imagined, "I'm nobody..." read like Shannon did....I think it is the definitive reading....should be required watching in classrooms across the country! After the kids have had a chance to try it themselves.
And the moment where she says (I'm paraphrasing): "Is there anything more than love and death. If you know, tell me its name" (for me, that is THE iconic declaration of the play). Shannon came down really hard on that, with sudden ferocity, and I was soooo moved, since I felt that she also found that a signal moment, and wanted to make it explode for the audience. The combination of the meaning of the words, the surprise impact of her reading, and my sense of personal rapport with her interpretation affected me powerfully... it was all I could do to keep from bawling at that moment....and that's no metaphor.
(I still have some reservations about the play itself, and even a few aspects of the way ED is rendered even in this performance, but they do not diminish the overall satisfaction I had with my two hours enthrallment last night.)
I'm sorry I've gotten so carried away as to imagine you'd want to read all this. 'Bottom line" is that Shannon's skill and maturity as a performer is impressive, and I am grateful that I had a chance to see Emily at 53 portrayed by an actress at 17, since I think that embodies the real secret of ED's genius, and her life-strategy.
More power and artistic opportunities to Shannon and NEYT. Both are a gift to - and from - our community. And of course, to Steven and Peter who have always been a gift to the community, and have made it all this possible.
With appreciation,
Ben Wise