By Gretchen C. Van Benthuysen
For some, poetry is to be endured. For others, it opens their eyes to a whole new world of expression.
For Emily Dickinson, poetry became her life. Her reason for living. Her way of dealing with death and disappointment, hope and happiness. It helped her survive the loneliness of living in New England in the mid-19th century.
The Two River Theater Company’s production of “The Belle of Amherst,” based on Dickinson’s life and continuing through May 5 in Red Bank, is a loving revival of the one-woman show written by William Luce (he specialized in them, and wrote this one for Julie Harris, who premiered it on Broadway in 1976).
A one-person show staged on a traditional set better have an exceptional actor and script or ticket-holders will be heading for the exits by intermission.
Not to worry. Under the superb direction of TRT’s founder and executive producer Robert Rechnitz, Silliman’s remarkable performance keeps us interested for the entire two hours.
Rechnitz, a retired professor of American literature at Monmouth University after 35 years, brings an intricate understanding of the complexities of Dickinson’s work that infuses Silliman’s performance.
When she died in 1886 at age 56, Dickinson had written almost 1,800 poems. Less than a dozen had been published while she lived and very few people even knew she was a poet.
While Luce’s script and Silliman’s performance reveal a young woman curious about life, eager for romance, obedient yet headstrong at times, one can’t help think how different – how successful – her life as a poet might have been if only she had been born 100 years later.
Her poems mostly are written in short stanzas; just imagine what she could have done on Twitter.
Reclusive – maybe on purpose, at least in the beginning – known as the Lady in White (Dickinson wore white dresses exclusively), she withdrew from life so much she eventually talked to visitors through closed doors. She never married and her most intimate relationships outside the family took place by mail.
Silliman, a TRT regular, brings a palpable sense of fragility to a character whose life was bombarded by the early deaths of people she cared for in a pre-antibiotic/no vaccination world. Later, Dickinson for years tended to her mother’s needs following a stroke a year after her father died.
Silliman’s tearful telling of the loss of a strict father who never seemed to smile brought tears to my eyes as well. And I wasn’t the only one in the audience sniffling.
But mostly, “The Belle of Amherst” is a play filled with much laughter. It isn’t a biography, or a history lesson, nor an English lit lecture. It’s a super, well-done revival of an American play obviously close to the heart of the theater’s founder with an extremely talented actress that should not be missed.
Journalist Gretchen C. Van Benthuysen’s theater news and reviews can be found on theatercues.com.
