Graceful and glorious Graceful and glorious (January 24, 2003)

Bus Barn delivers a great show about life

by Leonard Schwarz

Grace Stiles is an elderly, illiterate woman who has outlived her husband and her five sons. Now she is alone and dying of cancer, in a primitive cabin in the mountains of western Virginia.

Gloria Whitmore is the hospice worker sent to tend to her. She is a Harvard MBA who recently resigned her partnership at a New York City management consulting firm because her husband, an attorney, joined a law firm in Virginia. But we learn Gloria is also the wounded animal here. While Grace needs help with the simplest chores, Gloria needs help with her soul.

This premise may sound like the set-up for a mawkish, made-for-TV movie. But playwright Tom Ziegler has written a smart, often funny two-person play that is anything but mawkish, and in bringing it to the stage, the Bus Barn Stage Company has done just about everything right.

Although four of her children died young and her husband was not a nice man, Grace is still satisfied with the life God gave her. Gloria, on the other hand, has had it all: a successful career, a nice family, tons of money. Yet she could not be more unhappy with her life or more uncertain about whom to blame.

A discontented amateur social worker is exactly what Grace does not need in her final days, and the threat Gloria's presence represents for Grace's peace of mind gives "Grace & Glorie" (the title is a play on words) a distinctly sharp edge. In some fundamental ways, these two women disapprove of each other, and the tension between them energizes the play.

So do the performances of Lillian Bogovich as Grace and Lisa Wiseman as Gloria. In her every move and utterance, Wiseman registers the self-confidence Gloria feels when it comes to solving the problems of others and the inadequacy she feels in dealing with her own. Bogovich, for her part, creates a Grace who is simple but never stupid, feisty but never mean, appealing but never soft-and-fuzzy lovable.

On Opening Night, both actresses occasionally struggled with their lines, and Wiseman periodically lapsed into an altogether inappropriate Southern accent of some sort. But these flaws were more than transcended by the actresses' intelligent, well-modulated performances. Indeed, when, at the end of the show, Bogovich took her bow, it was jarring to see her move crisply across the stage. So convincing -- without being distracting -- had her movements been as a frail old woman.

Credit director Erin McCormack for finding the graceful rhythm in playwright Ziegler's text, for without the ebbs and flows of anger, humor and self-discovery that mark this production, "Grace & Glorie" could become a very long night's journey into carping and cancer.

Further distinguishing the Bus Barn production is Barbara J. Cannon's impressive set -- a completely realistic cabin interior that firmly establishes Grace's backwoods world. Add to this the sound design of Brooks White, and it is difficult to believe those chickens we hear are not right outside the cabin's back door, waiting to annoy Gloria each time she steps out.

Only on the costume front does the Bus Barn production go astray. Presumably to underscore the difference in social class between the two women, designer Goulet Bartholomew dresses Gloria as if she were going to a docent meeting at an urban art museum. But after one visit to Grace's cabin, this sophisticated woman would surely have switched to attire more suited to dealing with chickens.

When the greatest flaw in a community theatre production is the costuming of one character, you know it is a good show. And that is just what "Grace & Glorie" is. Don't be put off by the cancer. This is a show about life.

What: "Grace and Glorie," presented by the Bus Barn Stage Company

Where: Bus Barn Theatre, 97 Hillview Ave. in Los Altos

When: Through Feb. 15. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sunday matinees on Feb. 2 and 9.

Cost: Tickets are $20 Thursdays through Saturdays; $17 on Sundays.

Info: Call (650) 941-0551 or visit www.busbarn.org