The Beck Center’s current show, The Young Man from Atlanta, is a wonderful creation that is as much fun to talk about, replay and analyze when it’s done as it is to watch it while sitting in the intimate Beck Center Studio Theatre.
This lively, sensitive, beautifully-acted version of Horton Foote’s 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning play lets us peek into the appealing mix of grit and love that propels the Kidder family. It’s set in 1950s Houston and traces two jarring days.
Director Eric Schmiedl handles Foote’s script with care, avoiding caricatures. The result? A nuanced and touching window into the hearts of wealthy Will Kidder (Dudley Swetland) and his wife, Lily Dale (Anne McEvoy). When we meet the sixtyish couple, it’s been several years since their 37-year-old son drowned, but the facts (or secrets) of his death in Florida obsess each one and continue to shape their lives: Will spends money like the proverbial drunken sailor and Lily Dale prays all the time. They are probably foolish, but we love them anyway.
The dynamic between long-married Will and Lily Dale quietly electrifies this play. Foote’s plays are like this: glimpses into souls and loves of ordinary lives. In Foote’s world, no one is truly ordinary. The performances of the lead couple aren’t flashy, but are, rather, magnificently subversive in the way they make the audience complicit in their character’s lies; we want the best for them, as if they were a beloved family.
Swetland, often blustering and confused, but always struggling to succeed, moves Will beyond the Texan stereotype of the proud, self-made stoic to reveal (without overselling it) his courage. McEvoy, alternately touching her heart, her arms, her neck, smiling and being gracious as can be, shines as the wife of such a man — the seemingly obedient wife, never anything in her pretty little head but charities and lunches. They are a believable couple whose lies to themselves and others inspire more pity than contempt.
The title character is a friend (he says) of their late son where they both lived at the Atlanta YMCA. Does that remind you of a certain song? The Kidders (such a great name for them) are oblivious. This is, after all, an age of denial, willful ignorance.
Rounding out the rest of the excellent cast we have Pete Davenport (Michael Regnier) as Lilly Dale’s widowed stepfather who lives with the Kidders; Carson (Kyle Huff), who claims to be Davenport’s distant great-nephew who also (as it turns out) lived in that same Atlanta YMCA.
Others in the cast include Will’s secretary (perky Lizzy Renfroe), Will’s unsentimental young boss Ted Cleveland, Jr. (James Alexander Rankin), Will’s protegee, kindly Tom Jackson(Dave Hetrick), the family maid Clara (Tina D. Stump) and their former helper, the now-aged Etta Doris Meneffree (Brenda Cassandra Adrine).
If we knew them, if they were family, we’d gossip (mostly) lovingly about them. “Why didn’t they see…? How could she/he have done/said that? Bless her/his heart.” Gossip is an old southern pastime and Foote gets it exactly right. An additional note: As a native Texan, I am often amused by bad Texas accents, but to my ears, this cast got it (most of it) exactly right. Bravo for that too.
Bottom Line: This is one of the finest “serious” plays I’ve seen lately. If you like Tennessee Williams (but sans the self-pity) or Flannery O’Connor or just plain Horton Foote, then you’ll love this play. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you owe it to yourself to find out.
The Young Man from Atlanta runs through Sun 6/28. For more information or tickets go to the Beck Center website.
[Written by Laura Kennelly] [Photo of Dudley Swetland & Anne McEvoy b: Kathy Sandham]Lakewood, OH 44107