By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Ryan Fagan
Carlisle Ellis (L) bonds with Chris Fernandez as Cliff Madison watches.
Those with an ear for the richness of the English language will be rewarded in Live Theatre Workshop’s production of “Holiday Memories,” a pair of one-act plays based on short stories by Truman Capote, adapted for the stage by Russell Vandenbroucke.
The dialogue we hear comes straight from Capote’s writing, full of Southern dialect, the author’s descriptions of neighbors “entirely without social talent” and such. The adjectives he finds to describe the heavenly scents of homemade fruit cakes baking in the oven take on magical proportions.
Both stories began life as published magazine pieces: “The Thanksgiving Visitor” (1967) and “A Christmas Memory” (1956). Both draw from autobiographical times of Capote growing up poor in Monroeville, Alabama, in the 1930s – a rural area full of people “who lived in lonely places.”
That loneliness hangs around the edges of this life and is carefully nurtured by director Rhonda Hallquist in developing the companionship that seven-year-old Buddy creates with his elderly cousin Miss Sook.
Others think Miss Sook is rather simple minded. She has always been single. Her childlike ways perfectly suit Buddy, and at times there is a genuine wisdom to her observations.
Equal to the writing are the performances of Cliff Madison as the adult Capote, a kind of background narrator remembering these stories, and young Chris Fernandez as the imaginative Buddy. Fernandez is a three-time participant in the Arizona Theatre Company’s Summer On Stage program. He learned his acting lessons well and currently attends Pima Community College.
Carlisle Ellis plays Miss Sook with such a plaintive innocence it is difficult not to jump on stage and give her a big hug. She is the one who makes the friendship with Buddy so believable.
To describe the plots of each story could never do the experience justice. In some ways, the 1930s of rural Alabama were simpler because they had no technology. But in other ways they were more challenging times. Along with the challenge of having very little money, there was a devotion to beliefs in the powers of God and the importance of maintaining moral virtue in all of one’s relationships that made its own demands.
In today’s cynical times, hearing these sincerely expressed thoughts of Heavenly powers can be quite bracing.
Matt Brown and Candace Bean, also new faces to the LTW stage, play a number of supporting roles as relatives and acquaintances who test the bonds between Buddy and Sook.
“The Thanksgiving Visitor” recalls the daily struggles of Buddy at school where he’s always picked on for being a sissy, and Sook at home soothing his artistic sensitivities.
When Sook insists Buddy invite the school’s biggest bully to their family’s Thanksgiving dinner, the occasion becomes rather emotional.
“A Christmas Memory” begins with the Sook’s traditional baking of fruit cakes, moves on to the twosome’s venture to the woods to bring home a Christmas tree and then to the heartwarming Christmas Day sharing of gifts.
In the program notes, Hallquist writes: “I hope we tell these stories in a way that makes you believe all memories are truth – clearest truth, gauzy-around-the-edges truth, sincerest and hopeful truth, the only truth that matters.”
“Holiday Memories” continues through Dec.29 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd. Tickets are $18, with discounts available. For details and reservations, 520-327-4242, www.livetheatreworkshop.org
