Don't tell anyone, but I'm a little tired of holiday shows. (I'll see 10 different productions this season.) So I'm grateful when a theater offers a good rendition of a play without Victorian costumes, carolers, elves or reindeer. Dayton's Human Race Theatre Company is staging Beth Henley's 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner,
Crimes of the Heart, through Saturday, and it's worth an hour's drive to see.
An added benefit is that one of the three colorful Magrath sisters is played by Corinne Mohlenhoff, a regular at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and the winner of a 2004 Cincinnati Entertainment Award as outstanding actress in Ovation Theatre's Fallen Angels. A year ago she was nominated for a 2003 CEA for a performance with Ovation as Babe Magrath, the same role she plays at Human Race.
Mohlenhoff, as the flaky baby sister who has shot her husband in a fit of embarrassed anger, is part of a tight trio: Shana Goodsell is gorgeous Meg, who left Hazelhurst, Miss., to pursue a singing career in California, and Jennifer Joplin plays plain Lenny, the responsible sister whose life remains on hold while she cares for the grandparents who raised the three after their mother's suicide.
The comedy-drama showcases each actress, but the best moments are when the three are together. Lenny is jealous of Meg's easy, thoughtless ways with men; Meg is frustrated that her sisters are mired in a going-nowhere hometown; both are frantic over Babe's naíveté and willfulness, which has landed her into some serious hot water. As the three interact, long-simmering sibling rivalries surface -- providing humor and conflict.
Crimes of the Heart doesn't offer simple solutions, although brighter days might be ahead for Lenny. But the outcomes of Meg and Babe's issues with men and scandalous behavior are left for audiences to imagine. The show does not tidy up loose ends: It's like life, where a few things might work and the rest take time. When the sisters blow out 30 candles on Lenny's birthday cake, you feel like you've spent time with a real family. Grade: B
CRIMES OF THE HEART, presented by the Victoria Theatre Association and the Human Race Theatre Company at Dayton's Loft Theatre, continues through Sunday.
